Sunday 9 October 2011

Anna Bligh becomes Chairman Mao


Mao Zedong would be proud.

In a move reminiscent of Chairman Mao Zedong and his infamous Red Guards, Queensland children will be forced to study Premier Bligh’s ‘We are Queenslanders’ speech, as part of the government’s official school curriculum next year.

The assignment states...

"In this unit students will examine how language is used to persuade in famous motivational speeches from political and cultural contexts.''

WTF?

This takes government propaganda to a new level.

Amazing making school children study speeches of a current serving political leader, especially on the eve of an election.

Martin Luther King, Churchill, Thatcher, even Menzies, Lange or Muldoon, I can understand.

Is this brainwashing?

5 comments:

nomooremike said...

As usual you can't see the forest for the trees, if this curriculum is going to be valid it must contain currently topical speeches so they can be discussed in their historical context.

This blog has turned into shadow of it's former self, Hillbilly has taken your mantle.

Syd Walker said...

"We're the ones that they knock down, and we get up again!" said Anna Bligh as the flooding crisis hit Queensland.

Would "we're the ones who cower down and roll over" attract less opprobrium?

Yet the story is already dated. Bligh's speech won't be taught in schools according to today's AAP.

It's worth viewing that article, because it also clarifies where the 'Chairman Mao' analogy comes from.

I don't mind reading in CairnsBlog what the LNP thinks. It would just be nice if its press releases - even if edited a tad - are identified as such.

Michael P Moore said...

Syd, I read in that same SMH article where Bligh said that in January "70% of Qld was flooded". WTF? Try 15% maybe. And where did the dumb media get that invention from?

:Kevin-John: Morgan. said...

What the hell?
Anna Bligh is hopeless because she copied Peter Beattie when she cheated on her exams, both in high school and university, and we now have the proof!
She cannot read, she cannot write, and sheś also a power-junkie!
Both her and Beattie are alike.
Sounds like a perfect match for Mao!

KitchenSlut said...

As nomooremike says I think the motivation is likely to be an obsession to be contemporary more than anything else! Perhaps if there is a problem it's that we need anythng to be so quickly contemporaary to be relevant to our lives?

We can argue that contemporary is overdone in education but then i'm not a teacher trying to maintain attention. I would prefer that the specific speech was not presented in the direct context it was and perhaps more perpheral rather tan central with reference to contemporary disussion and more sound reference to the historical past?

As the saying goes, when faced with a choice between a conspiracy and a stuff up ..... alwway go for the stuff up if you are betting!