MINDLESS - Book Review

For understandably busy parents who neither have the time nor the mental stamina to pay close attention to what their children are learning at school, Bella d’Abrera’s Mindless: How the Education System is Indoctrinating Children and Destroying Our Civilisation is a sobering wake-up call.

Its message is as clear as it is sharp: if you won’t decide what’s best for your kids, then activists and the government will.

Dr d’Abrera’s book is the product of extensive research and incisive observation. A grim humour is woven into the narrative, highlighting the absurdity of what is actually going on in the educational institutions of core Anglophone nations, particularly the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. Light-hearted passages cut across serious topics, the combination of which allows the reader to ease into complex and highly contested themes.

Around the middle of the book, however, my chuckles gave way to anger, and amusement to horror, as the gravity of what is happening in classrooms across the English-speaking world dawned on me. The book’s exposé of the grotesque material to which children are being exposed lays bare the depravity of many of those who have been entrusted with our children’s and grandchildren’s formative years.

The consequences are already visible: falling educational standards, the rise of mental health conditions, and the wedge testing the bond between children and their parents and grandparents. These are just some of the documented consequences I would mention in polite company.

The phenomenon of children lecturing their parents about carbon emissions, systemic racism, and gender theory bear an eerie resemblance to, if perhaps not the excesses, then at least some of what was encouraged during Mao’s cultural revolution in Communist China.

The link between woke progressivism and neo-Marxism, as explored in-depth in the book, is not the product of a fringe conspiracy theory, but something real, traceable, and - increasingly - transparent.

Marxist Paulo Freire’s philosophy, Critical Pedagogy, “views teaching and learning as inherently political acts aimed at empowering students to critically analyse and challenge systems of [perceived] oppression, inequality, and social injustice.” Regrettably, his writings have become some of the most influential literature in the field of education. Dr d’Abrera recalled a schoolteacher making the following declaration at a rally for the Harris-Walz presidential ticket in the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election:
“I saw education for what it really was – the greatest instrument of Social Justice in this country”. As she delivered this revelation, cheers and whoops of delight erupted from her fellow attendees …

For parents and grandparents who think that education was meant to be centred around skills-building, the development of character, and the transmission of knowledge, the way in which some teachers see their role today would leave them appalled.

But this is hardly surprising given the sort of training that soon-to-be teachers undergo on campus. An audit of teaching degrees at Australian universities by the Institute of Public Affairs in 2023 found:
•    The equivalent to merely 10 weeks of classes, across a four-year Bachelor of Education degree, are dedicated to the teaching of core literacy and numeracy skills.
•    Nearly one-third of all teaching subjects on offer relate to woke concepts and ideology.
•    Fewer than one-in-ten teaching subjects are about literacy and numeracy.

When Australia’s teacher training colleges were replaced by universities, they were not simply absorbed into the university system administratively. The focus of the profession was transformed, and with it, the formative years of the next generation of Australians.

Not all teachers are active participants in the social engineering of the next generation, of course. Peer-reviewed journal articles have established that many teachers are just struggling to get by, as expectations are continuously placed on them to teach young children about changes in the mean and variability of relevant components of the weather, such as temperature, precipitation, and wind over a period of at least 30 years, and how this relates to the net absorption and re-release of infrared radiation by atmospheric substances.

And that’s just the global warming component.

The Australian National Curriculum requires the topic of ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures’ to be incorporated into mathematics.

I applaud teachers who can figure out how Indigenous Australian cultures can be viewed through the lens of the quadratic formula. But even this herculean task is not enough.

The cross-curriculum priorities also require the teaching of ‘sustainability’ in English (not just science) and ‘Australia’s Engagement with Asia’ in science (not just geography and social studies). On reflection, it might actually be a good thing to learn science from the Japanese and Singaporeans, considering the abysmal quality of science education in Australia today.

Rather than focusing on the quality of their students’ education, at least some Australian schools have an unhealthy obsession with their students’ gender.

As Dr d’Abrera reported, in some Australian states:
Schools are legally permitted to socially [gender] transition a student without ever informing the family, provided the child is deemed a ‘mature minor’ by a principal or teacher. They do not have to undergo a psychological assessment, and there is no external oversight.

In one school, a so-called ‘wellbeing team’ sent confidential emails to students offering ‘gender support’ and a degree of secrecy to students who reach out to access gender-related services at school. It would be unreasonable to expect parents to calmly accept such state sanctioned intrusiveness.

There have, indeed, been parental pushbacks. And Mindless does end on a genuinely positive note regarding the actions that parents, families, and the broader community can take and are taking right now. But I am discouraged by the evident imbalance between the relatively tepid levels of pushback in Australia and the outraged response of parents in the US.

The rate of homeschooling, one of the most resource-intensive means of parental resistance, is almost six times more common in the US than in Australia. While homeschooling is by no means the only way to resist the Marxist indoctrination of children, American parents are clearly more willing to fight back. Organisations like Moms for America and Moms for Liberty are taking an uncompromising stance against the recruitment of their children into what Dr d’Abrera rightly labels a social engineering project.

But, in Mindless, Dr d’Abrera seemed to struggle to find examples of comparable pushbacks in Australia. It is for this very reason that her book is needed now more than ever in Australian homes.

For many Australian parents, the content of this book will have a traumatic effect. But if this prompts them to invest more time getting to know what exactly it is their children are being taught at school, the effect will ultimately be salutary. For many American parents, the content will come as less of a surprise, but the book still offers insights into the real purpose of revolutionary pedagogic philosophers and their experiments in the classroom.

I recommend this book not just to parents, but also to young couples who are about to start a family of their own. They have something that middle-aged parents often lack - time.

Over the next several years, young couples will have the time to research and really consider different educational options for their children. They will be able to talk to their friends and family who have had real-life experience with the educational institutions in which they may be interested. And many fortunate ones will be able to seek parenting and educational advice from their own parents.

Let us be honest, here. Homeschooling and enrolling in private schools are not realistic options for everyone. And, it must be emphasised, parents should not have to resort to considering them just so their children can escape leftist indoctrination.

Active participation in your children’s and grandchildren’s lives and education is crucial, lest the government and activists occupy the vacant ground you leave behind.
Picking up this book is the first step that parents, grandparents, and parents-to-be can take in playing a more active role in their children’s and grandchildren’s education.

MINDLESS BOOK TOUR
To celebrate the release of this book, The Institute of Public Affairs will host a series of launch events across the states.
To find out more click here:
Mindless: How the Education System is Indoctrinating Children and Destroying Our Civilisation