Preface to the final Episode
Dear Subscribers and Supporters
It’s now nearly two years since Marking the Role was first heard on streaming services. Since then episodes have been downloaded over 100k times across 46 countries.
I’ve tried to cover the difficult issues in education yet have thrown in some light stuff occasionally. There’s no doubt the heavy stuff hit the most nerves and received the most downloads.
However, due to a nasty medical diagnosis in the past week, Episode 39 will be the last from me. I’ll maintain the ‘Philtered’ publication for as long as possible and try to cover an education topic when I can. As the problem is throat related, podcasts will be a challenge and intermittent.
If there’s any of you who’d like to take the Marking the Role podcast over, while maintaining its questioning stance, please contact me. It’s more work than you might think yet I maintain it’s vital to give teachers a voice.
A shift in teachers who care
What I have noticed over the past two years of hosting the podcast is that many older teachers, especially in 2022, left the field or changed education systems. They were disillusioned, burned out and angry.
Unfortunately, these were often the teachers who cared most about their students and what they were learning. They had experienced teaching and education in it’s golden years. They weren’t prepared to tolerate the departmental and union overreach we see progressing in 2024.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s some excellent young teachers doing tremendous work. However, there’s many who’ve entered the profession with very low ATARs, a headful of ideas implanted from woke university degrees and an inability to question the overreach we’re seeing. Most don’t even see it as overreach.
These young teachers are cogs in the wheel of ideologically driven education bureaucracies hell-bent on social change rather than quality education. Their union, equally as ideologically infected, is no use to them at all.
The Parents?
Well there’s another story altogether. Parents on the whole want to be nice. They want to accept rules and not rock the boat for their children at the school they attend. Sadly, they are far too stressed to be involved in the minutiae of their child’s education. The demands of mortgage, work and general 21st century living are heavy.
But parents are also cogs in the bureaucratic wheel. They have unconsciously passed on their parental role in many things to the education authorities. Maybe this has always been so, yet the parental voice on things that should matter has never been so silent.
A wolf in sheep's clothing
I’m generalising of course when I say ‘silent parental voice’. By this I mean the vast majority of parents whose children obey rules, don’t complain, respect others and try to learn.
These kids make their parent’s lives easier. Those parents are the silent ones, who get on with it. The ‘kind’ ones who love the sound of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) chant because gee - it sounds nice. However, under its cloak of touchy-feely niceness is something very different indeed.
Plato was right
Their kindness has allowed activist parents and government ideologs to influence behaviour and inclusion policy, subject content, national history and gender education. One of Plato's most famous quotes is “Silence gives consent’’. This simply means that by not speaking out about issues, we give the dominant voices permission to implant their agenda.
This is certainly what has happened. The majority of parents, by being silent, has given consent to a radical change in Australian education and through this, Australian society. I’ll talk a little about this in the final episode coming out this Friday 5th April.
And finally …
Right now though, I’d like to thank those who’ve supported the podcast over the past two years. I can’t name you, but you know who you are. Some of you took the risk of raising your voice in the face of education policy failure and absurd bureaucratic bungling. Listeners appreciated your voice and your bravery as did I.
If you want to subscribe for free to the Philtered publication, just click the button below. It doesn’t cost anything but the posts and podcasts will be intermittent.
Thanks again
Phil Dye