I saw Emma Tom's newspaper column while passing through Australia's Gold Coast - I'm glad it's on the Web!
Australian students are just as ignorant of history as their American counterparts, but then again, our politicians are ignorant too (even as an outsider, I know 'Damien' just won 'Australian Idol'):
ONCE again, Australian school kiddies are in big trouble. According to a new report commissioned by the nation's education ministers, bucketloads of the ignorant little buggers don't know why we celebrate Australia Day, have a governor-general or whack a Union Jack in the corner of our flag.
...Australian students are a bunch of lazy pinheads who should be sent to a corner to think about what they haven't done. And while they're down there, why not force 'em to start memorising important dates such as 1788, 1901 and 1947 - the latter marking one of many previous media panics about ill-educated Aussie youngsters unable to write in proppa sentences.
Here's the thing, though. If students are required to swot up on subjects politicians think are important (namely history, civics and blindly swallowing spin), surely politicians should have to gain a rudimentary knowledge of something young people rate highly, namely pop culture.
Last week during the electioneering in Victoria, punters were treated to what has become a pre-poll staple: candidates making tokenistic appearances on yoof media programs and revelling in their dearth of pop cultural knowledge, wearing their ignorance (or at least their professed ignorance) of Paris Hilton's shaggin' habits like rosettes of honour.
On the penultimate day of the campaign, Steve Bracks and Ted Baillieu accidentally ended up on air at Fox FM at the same time. Neither was able to answer questions about Jessica Simpson, Australian Idol or even the winner of the Melbourne Cup.
...It's easy to dismiss the nipply adventures of Hilton, Simpson et al as low-brow ephemera, but this could well be at politicians' peril.
Insisting that citizens develop more interest in crucial matters of state won't change the fact that many are not interested - or at least not as interested as they are in whether bootleg honeymoon videos reveal that Britney Spears is bisexual and threesome-eager (to quote one popular, saliva-dripping internet site).
One Australian broadsheet - regarded as a quality publication - regularly charts the most clicked-on stories from its internet site ... the A and AB-demographic readers of this particular organ prefer feasting on fast food features about grisly baby deaths, celebrity sex romps and cyclops kittens. On Monday, the fifth most popular story here was Crocodile yak: Elton shouts at shoes - 321 words about Elton John dashing off stage for a Down Under chunder during the first performance of his latest Australian tour. Apparently a guitarist masked the knighted pianist's sudden and wordless exit by noodling an impromptu solo.
While I'm not suggesting that knowledge of such an event be tested in HSC exams, it is worth ditching the heated, high versus low culture debate for a moment and looking at the situation from a realpolitik perspective.
Growing political disengagement among young people is regarded by many pundits as a serious threat to democracy, with party membership, trust in office-holders and interest in traditional politics plunging faster than a Brownlow Medal ceremony neckline.
Reaching these voters requires learning to speak their language or, at the very least, not taking such elitist delight in disparaging it.
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