Anthony Albanese's comments say nothing about academics and everything about the state of the liberal educational environment today.
It's long past time that we should start calling public schools what they really are: government-run indoctrination mills.
During a revealing moment at a press conference this week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese praised public schools in his country for preventing "the rise" of "far-right ideological positions."
"I always love going to public schools," he said. "Kids don't see race, religion, gender, anything else. They just see other kids … hatred and division is [are] something that's learned. And so public schooling is so important."
Albanese's comments are utter nonsense. What he is basically saying is that adults should act like children and that society should not have laws based in reality.
Implicit in the Prime Minister's remarks is that thinking men are men, women are women, and that marriage is between one man and one woman is hateful and divisive. What his comments also suggest is that it is "far right" to think that countries should take into account racial, ethnic, and cultural differences when crafting immigration policy.
Anyone who has read Aristotle's Politics or Plato's The Republic can see how Albanese is seeking to replace the Christian principles that buttressed Western Civilization for centuries. Marco Rubio alluded to this recently in a speech in Europe.
"We are part of one civilization – Western Civilization," he told leaders in Munich. "We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir."
The great statesmen of the Middle Ages understood Rubio's argument well. They knew that nations are corporate persons that not only have a debt to God but are obligated to protect their members' traditions, values, customs, and heritage.
Like Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who rebuked Rubio for promoting "Christian nationalism" while speaking to reporters this week, Albanese would have all this done away with in the name of "diversity, inclusion, and equity," the un-holy trinity of Albanese's woke religion.
The goal of educational institutions in the country Albanese wants to bring to fruition is not the spiritual or intellectual improvement of students as children of God but programming them in order to make them hate their own "privilege" and to have them think it is shameful to want a country that takes pride in protecting Australian culture and Christianity first and foremost.
Fortunately for Americans, President Donald Trump has sided with parents and teachers who are aware of the sinister policies that public schools in the U.S. are seeking to enact. During the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, Trump emphasized the importance of religion and announced new guidelines for the protection of prayer in public schools.
"To be a great nation, you have to have religion. You have to have faith. You have to have God," he said.
Last month, Trump issued a proclamation for National School Choice Week. In it, he celebrated parents' "God-given right" to direct their children's education instead of Deep State bureaucrats and liberal activists. "My administration is bringing the sinister 'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion' agenda to a screeching halt and … we are proudly eliminating Federal funding for schools that permit discriminatory treatment and anti-American indoctrination," his statement read.
The contrast between Albanese and Trump couldn't be starker. On the one hand, Trump is calling out DEI policies and the attacks waged on religion and public prayer in schools, all the while seeking to ensure persons of faith can live out their beliefs. On the other hand, Albanese wants to prevent religion and Christian teachings from being on display in schools. Which vision will prevail only time will tell.