Classrooms still learning: "It just does not make sense to undertake a review when so much money, time and effort have left us a curriculum which is partially implemented and not ready to be reviewed."


Having been involved as teacher, submission writer and program writer with various curriculums over the years, I have seen the process follow the traditional logical steps.

They are the call for submissions, the writing of the curriculum, further submissions and rewriting, training of staff as part of the implementation, and after the teaching of the new curriculum, a review, including input from the various stakeholders.

The article by Kenneth Wiltshire in defence of an early review of the national curriculum before it has been fully implemented, and taught, and before any professional development of staff is not a sufficient explanation (''Critics of school curriculum review too quick to perceive a threat instead of potential way forward'', January 16).

It just does not make sense to undertake a review when so much money, time and effort, not to mention all the submissions and compromises, have left us a curriculum which is partially implemented and not ready to be reviewed.

His arguments for a premature review seem highly principled, however, they conflict with the public pronouncements of the minister and Kevin Donnelly, who have tied the review to an ideological agenda.

It's just a terrible waste of resources and will create one big mess for schools, parents and teachers.

Vanessa Tennent Oatley

The best thing the review of the national school curriculum could do is make sure the ATAR (Australian tertiary admissions rank) compares apples with apples.

One of the reviewers, Kenneth Wiltshire, says that a key issue is ''the very concept of a national curriculum''.

When the International Baccalaureate gives its students a huge advantage over HSC students in achieving top ATAR scores, as revealed recently in the Herald (''Baccalaureate students at private school top HSC's best performer'', smh.com.au, January 7), then clearly they are not the same fruit. As the IB is clearly not part of ''a national curriculum'', its ATAR scores should be adjusted down to reflect this bias or not included in the ATAR system.

David McMaster Cremorne

I fear Kenneth Wiltshire has it all a bit skew-whiff. He says the appointed reviewers have come under heavy criticism even before getting down to their task. It seems to many that the appointed reviewers have engaged in heavy criticism before getting down to their task. A thoroughly Yes Minister approach to an inquiry.

John Garretty Kelso

If the national curriculum review provides an independent, high-level assessment of how the curriculum design and initial implementation matches with the commonwealth- and states-approved 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, and provides a comparison with higher-performing countries, it could be worthwhile.

Like many hundreds of others, I participated in a small way in the development of parts of the curriculum and it was hardly a gathering of the cultural left.

It is indeed important that "students have a sound understanding and appreciation of the values, beliefs and institutions" which "enable Australia to be such a peaceful, tolerant and open society". However the tone of Kevin Donnelly's reference to "Western civilisation" ("Western values must be at core of school reforms", January 14) risks a reversion to outmoded and inappropriate exceptionalism. As with all the traditions which have moulded our society, from the first Australians to recent migrants, Western civilisation has provided both positive and negative legacies and our students should be exposed to all of it.

David Hind Neutral Bay

Unfortunately, Kenneth Wiltshire, Christopher Pyne's remarks about what he hoped the curriculum review would achieve have only increased my perception of it as a potential threat.

Debby Nicholls Balmain

Artist's depiction of a roo is certainly illuminating

I suspect that Dr Martin Woods of the National Library is being somewhat facile in suggesting that the animal portrayed on the Portuguese manuscript might be a deer standing on its hind legs to feed off high foliage (''The roo that could rewrite history'', January 16).

Any number of illuminations over some centuries before the Processional illustrate such far more recognisably, and I doubt that any illuminator worth his salt at the time would have got away with something quite so non-deer-like if deer had been the intention.

It strikes me as far more redolent of some late 18th-century illustrations of kangaroos, based on dried-out skins, and although it is the strongest possible evidence in the absence of specific available documentary back-up (the absence of which is readily explainable by other factors outlined in the article), in combination with Peter Trickett's work it would appear to be beyond reasonable doubt that the Portuguese had been in and mapped at least parts of Australia well before the Dutch efforts of the early 17th century.

Derek Elwell Blackheath

It is possible that the Portuguese and Spanish were the first European traders to reach Australia. They sailed to the Moluccas and to West New Guinea seeking sandalwood, cinnamon and nutmeg. They must have known of the trade in sea cucumber that brought fishermen to northern Australia.

But kangaroos also exist in New Guinea, as do men with feathers in their hair. Indeed, the man looks more Papuan than Aboriginal. In any event, the British were the first Europeans to settle permanently, which is what brought my people here.

David Neilson Invergowrie

Taxing case of luck or good judgment

How jolly that the Australian Taxation Office wants to allow big business to oversee its own tax returns (''Big business in charge of own tax'', January 16). Apart from the small problem that 900 jobs will be lost, we must think on the bright side that the ''big four'' accounting firms would reap tens of millions of dollars each year for work now done by the ATO. Putting the fox in charge of the chicken house leaps to mind and Poor Fellow My Country could quickly become a reality. Funds would inevitably shrink dramatically for incidentals such as public schools and hospitals, public transport, infrastructure, retirement homes for the elderly that even now seem to be more and more for the wealthy elderly.

Lorraine Nelson Frenchs Forest

I wonder if we will be allowed to do our own tax, too?

Valerie Craig Orange

All change - again

There's only one course of action open to Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian after Wednesday night's bizarre train accident at Edgecliff: change the livery and change the name of Sydney Trains (again) as quickly as possible ('' 'It was like a monster coming up from the floor' '' , January 16).

Richard Mason Newtown

Locked up perhaps?

I am not sure how effective a lockout might be, but perhaps a lock-in would keep the streets safer (''Kings Cross defies violence trend'', January 16).

Ruth Ratner Northbridge

Still all at sea over asylum seekers

It is more than ''extremely worrying'' that the Coalition has exempted Australia's Navy sailors from ''their obligation to take reasonable care to ensure their own safety and that of other sailors and asylum seekers'' (''Another asylum boat turned around'', January 16). It's outrageous. So now the Australian Navy is on a war footing. Wasn't it the wars that the Coalition got Australia into that created asylum seekers in the first place?

Jan Carroll Potts Point

Bill Shorten and Sarah Hanson-Young, you assume what we want to know. What we actually want to know is that the boats have stopped, allowing legitimate refugees to apply, and that the deaths have stopped.

How many deaths happened under your watch? What we don't want is the people smugglers using government press releases as advertisements.

Tony Finnemore North Ryde

Well, as Robert Louis Stevenson observed, ''The cruelest lies are often told in silence''.

Edward Loong Milsons Point

Sleight of hand

How wonderful to read a good news story among the head-shaking awfulness of so much of our daily news (''Innovative therapy for paralysis is pure magic'', January 16).

Having fun and learning magic tricks can indeed ''trick'' a previously paralysed arm into doing lots of things most of us take for granted, such as eating with cutlery and cutting up fruit.

But better still, these newly acquired dexterities become permanent and may be added to by simply having fun and continuing to do so. It is magic indeed.

Joan Croll Drummoyne

There's too much fuzzy logic about beards

Elizabeth Farrelly writes that young men with beards suffer from a sense of entitlement and self-indulgence, drawing the longest bow between the fashionable beard and night time violence (''Beards and blokes: our entitlement generation'', January 16).

As a young man (25) with a beard, I can only say that as a sufferer of an unfortunate case of baby-face, I wear a beard because at meetings with qualified and capable adults, I feel I am taken more seriously than if I look like an 18 year old. And while we're pointing fingers, let me turn the mirror back onto Ms Farrelly and suggest she is putting the cart before the horse. Did my generation grow from a vacuum, or can we lay some blame with our Boomer overlords?

Daniel Rose Ainslie (ACT)

Elizabeth Farrelly says what needs to be said.

In addition to her fearless assessment of how we have betrayed our children by encouraging them to be self-seeking and self-indulgent, I would add that we have ceased to teach and examine the meaning of life.

How can we deny the self and seek what is good if our actions are not informed by spiritual or philosophical beliefs? Ms Farrelly is correct in stating that morality has become a "barely respectable topic of conversation".

Gaynor Donnelly Westleigh

And sometimes, Elizabeth Farrelly, a beard is just a beard.

Helen Robilliard Rodd Point

Marking the markers

I feel sorry for the young girl that had her HSC paper incorrectly marked, but unfortunately in an operation as large as HSC marking there are always bound to be mistakes ("Check finds HSC student robbed of 13 marks in modern history paper", January 16).

Let's be thankful that in this case all's well that ends well.

Peter Miniutti Ashbury

More stiff upper lip

I agree with Ric Baxter (Letters, January 16). I find it appalling that people watching tennis matches, or any other games, should boo players or shout obscenities.

I also find it irritating when over-enthusiastic participants/winners of any matches (again cricket or football) have to hug each other and jump up and down.

How much more dignified it would be if they just gave the person who has done something special a pat on the back and said, ''Well done''.

There is an expression, ''Manners maketh man'', but sadly our lack of respect for our fellow human being is declining. Enthusiasm is fine, but let us not be carried away.

Marjorie McKay Killara

Climate change must exist if sport is affected

Salvation is nigh: when intolerable heat makes summer sport impossible, the Australian public will finally rise up as one and demand urgent remedies to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown (''Extreme heat brings tennis to a halt'', smh.com.au, January 16).

Roger Pamphlett Balmain East

Sharapova's shriek streak

Having avoided watching (or rather hearing) Maria Sharapova for years because of her screaming, I could not avoid the finish of the tennis match against Karin Knapp. Boxers and woodchoppers express air and grunt right at the explosive point of contact. The latest slo-mo technology shows even more clearly how Sharapova extends her shriek, and heightens it, long after contact with the ball. Officials must act.

David Kennedy Newport

Implore politicians to stay away from prayer

As a Christian, I am horrified whenever I hear the Lord's Prayer muttered in Parliament (Letters, January 16). It does not belong to the State and they can keep their hands off it.

Niall McKay North Lambton

Your correspondents largely miss the point on the Greens' proposal to abolish Parliamentary prayers. The population of Australia comprises Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and a number of other religions, together with a large number of people who have no religion. In our secular society, which has no official religion and protects freedom of and freedom from religion, it is simply inappropriate to begin the sessions of the Parliament comprising the representatives of our whole population with a Christian ritual. It is as simple as that.

Richard Moss Chisholm (ACT)

I was initially very much in favour of removing the Lord's Prayer from Parliament. But then I was gripped with a terrible fear - what if our politicians turned into a bunch of argumentative, immature, egotistical, self-serving wastrals? Maybe it's not worth the risk.

Tim Austin Epping

Dirty washing

President Francois Hollande, as you defend your private life from intrusive media scrutiny, call up that essential French idiom, ''Il faut laver son ligne sale en famille'' (''It is best to wash one's dirty linen at home''). What a challenge. (''President's affair elephant in room as Hollande ducks questions on first lady'', January 16).

Mike Fogarty Weston (ACT)