Wildfire Series
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Wildfire Series
WOKE part 2: Dutton's Dilemma
(Part 2)
Following our exploration of the origins of the word "woke", Narelle and Tess dissect Peter Dutton's recent comments about "the woke agenda" in schools and education and the continued confusion so many of us have about what this word even means anymore.
Links & Resources
- Dutton's ambiguous definition of "woke" - SBS Facebook page
- Woke up call - Bill Browne, The Australia Institute
- 'Woke Up Call': Australian Attitudes to and Perceptions of 'Wokeness' - The Australia Institute
- Dutton drops vow to change school curriculum despite 'indoctrination' comments - ABC News
- Jacinta Price says Coalition will 'make Australia great again' - then accuses media of being 'obsessed with' Trump - The Guardian
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Speaker 2:Hiya, I'm Narelle Henry, a Noongar woman living out here in Perth in the wild wild west.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Tess Hayes and I am possibly the whitest woman in Australia, also living on Noongar country, australia, also living on Noongar country. So, narelle, I had learned a lot from listening to your part one of the origin of woke, and I'm finding it really interesting in the lead up to our federal election here, as we see more references to woke being used, but also the ambiguity of the word as well, in particular Peter Dutton referencing it recently in regards to schools and education. And we'll just play that now for everybody.
Speaker 4:Last night a woman asked you about getting the woke agenda out of schools and you spoke about potentially conditioning funding from schools to change their curriculum or to influence their curriculum. I think influence was the word that you used. Could I ask specifically what lessons or units you're concerned about having a woke agenda?
Speaker 5:I want to make sure that our kids, whether they're in primary school or secondary school, or indeed young Australians who are at universities, are receiving the education that their parents would expect them to receive, and our position will reflect community standards in relation to what is being taught at our schools and our universities. And you've seen some recent examples in relation to law school and the requirements being made. I think it was Macquarie University at the time. You've seen other academics who are out as part of protests on the streets and and and teachers. Similarly, that's being translated into the classroom. That's not something I support. I support young Australians being able to think freely, being able to assess what's before them and not being told and indoctrinated with something that is the agenda of others.
Speaker 3:Narelle, how does that particular clip make you feel?
Speaker 2:Enraged. I mean I listened to it and I don't want to hear it ever again. I just am so sick of this type of rubbish and I cannot believe that we're letting somebody in Australia, where we should know better, come out and talk about this type of trash I mean, we're watching it in the US roll out and fail. I mean it's an absolute train wreck. And now we have Peter Dunst saying the same thing and you can't actually define it. Like, if you can't define woke, what are you talking about? If you can't define a woke agenda, and then you're talking about woke agenda in schools, I think it's getting into really dangerous territory and I think we need to call it out. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I think the um, the contradiction that he has there, especially in that at the end, where he's talking about wanting kids to think freely and, to, you know, be critical thinkers and question things and yet at the same time assuming that they can't question their own teachers you know, if their teachers happen to go out and protest on the weekends, that the kids sort of take it that that has to be the way things are it's just bizarre. I think it's absolutely bizarre. And the other thing I found that sort of stood out to me with that was his talk about community standards. You know we educate parents. Yeah, parents want their see their kids educated, you know, to community standards, like what community and what standards you know you're talking about. It's just so ambiguous and I think it's purely fear-mongering community standards as well.
Speaker 2:Actually, I mean, if I'm thinking about the community that I'm coming from, I know that I come from a community who would want me to be thinking very critically about the information that I'm getting, that would want me to think for myself and then to be able to articulate how I feel about those matters and then make decisions based on those feelings but also perspectives that I'm getting from lots of different sources, understanding, you know, the agenda behind those sources and then being able to act on the information in terms of how I feel. So I mean, it's just so scary. Again, looking back at the US where they're burning books and trying to take the critical race theory out of the curriculum, it's getting a little bit dangerous. So, yeah, I really do want to know. I want Peter Dutton to tell me what is the work agenda in education, because I'm a teacher. Tell me, tell me, articulate it, write it down, dot point it.
Speaker 3:Let us really really understand what in the actual hell you are talking about and as a, as a teacher, I guess, just even the logistics of that. Like you know, you have a curriculum that you need to follow. You know, like, how, does. How would you say that your external life would ever impact the kids that you're teaching as well? I guess it just seems like such a disconnect to me that an individual teacher would have the ability and the opportunity to indoctrinate, you know, a whole classroom full of children to their own particular beliefs yeah, I mean, I'm a physio teacher so I could probably indoctrinate kids into thing into be their favourite sport.
Speaker 2:I think part of being an educator is being able to present all the different types of information required. So obviously I was in a very different space with phys ed, but if someone's an English teacher, that's where possibly this conversation would come in more. I imagine and without me thinking about it too much prior to this, please kind of jump in if I'm wrong but I think being able to present books and information and writings from people with different perspectives really just gives us a better view of the world and all the people in it. Like, why do we just want to hear from people like Peter Dutton Is that what he's asking? Because he did say the word indoctrination. What are we talking about with indoctrination? Explain that, describe that. What do you reckon?
Speaker 3:Well, a I don't think he can, and B I think that I mean. His response in that clip, I think is indicative of the confusion that lots of Australians feel about the term woke and how it's used in Australian society and what it actually means. I saw a survey back this was back from 2022, by the Australian Institute, and you know that commented that there's about 46% of Australians had no idea what woke meant and were very confused because over the years there's been so many different things described as woke from the Wiggles, the Queen, the Australian cricket team in different contexts, and so it becomes very sort of confusing for people as well. So I actually think it's just gobbledygook, like it's just lost its meaning and it's now just a sort of like a call to arms, you know, from an emotional standpoint that's driven by fear and have the world be. Yeah, just back in the 1950s male dominant situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really. It's really frightening. But if some of those organisations that you mentioned, let's talk about the Wiggles, is it because you know've got um people that look differently on there?
Speaker 3:now, yeah, I assume that it would be, that probably, yeah, with the first female wiggle and that sort of thing. So just, uh, diversity, right it's, it's being able to visually see diversity and you know, and uh, people reacting to that, I don't know quite how the royal family could be considered or in what context that was in, maybe when Meghan joined Meghan Markle, maybe who knows. But then, you know, that didn't exactly go well either.
Speaker 2:No, but then you've got Disney. And is that because they had a black snow white? Possibly yeah, and the Little Mermaid maybe. Yeah, and now everybody's like the world is ending because there is a black actress. Um, in a what they, what a lot of people feel is a traditionally right yeah, yep, yeah.
Speaker 3:And yet you know mickey roney was playing a japanese guy in Breakfast at Tiffany's back in, you know, like in the movies back then. That's fine, but you know we can't have a character in an animated movie be a different colour to white. Good line out of this report is by a quote by Bill Brown, who's the director of the Australian Institute's Democracy and Accountability Program, and he says the word woke has been used to describe everything from the Royal Family, disney, the Wiggles, climate action, vegan food, pope Francis, federal and state Liberal MPs and racial justice, to how the Tasmanian Liberals arranged their Senate ticket. When critics accuse everyone from the Wiggles, the Queen, the Pope and the Australian cricket team of all being woke, australians will unsurprisingly wonder what is so bad about being woke, or indeed what actually constitutes wokeness.
Speaker 3:Another key stat that I found quite interesting, as we are in the lead up to the federal election, was that, ahead of the last federal election in 2022, only one in five people who described themselves as woke were intended to vote for the Greens. So there were actually more people who said they were woke who intended to vote for the coalition for the Greens. So there were actually more people who said they were woke, who intended to vote for the coalition. So whether we see the same thing again this year with the word being more weaponised and you know, and what we've seen over in the US. It's a word that at the moment is very conflicting in its meaning here and it sort of makes sense then why Dutton can't even articulate what it means.
Speaker 2:I continue to be totally infuriated because for me again, work is caring about others, including others, making sure there's space for others, and usually when we hear it in, you know, in governments we've talked about, you know, in the previous podcast we talked about, we've talked about argentina, and now it's just so disappointing that we see that in australia. But that that tells me that number one, peter Dutton thinks we're dumb. Two, that it actually is going to work with a group of people, and I guess the fact that he cannot describe it much like, I mean, if we go back to the community standards that he's talking about, when he's talking about the community standards, that's that's totally vague as well and on the surface standards, that sounds completely reasonable, absolutely, totally reasonable. But actually, when you really think about it, it's really frightening and concerning. Because I don't want to politicise education We've seen it happen, particularly in Florida.
Speaker 2:I've got a couple of friends that are teachers in Florida and I've spoken to them about how mortifying it is for them. One of them is a gay teacher. She's Latina and it's you know, what they're doing there is hideous and we cannot afford to be doing that here. I think I just I'm hoping that we're smarter than that and that we can catch it.
Speaker 3:Do you think in this situation, dutton's using the term community standards interchangeably to traditional values? Because that sort of ties in, I guess, to anti-wokeness, as well as bringing things back to the way they used to be in scare quotes yeah, and see, when I think of community and when I think of traditional values, I think of caring for everyone.
Speaker 2:That's right. You know, we talked about this before we, we press the record button in terms of being really proud of our aboriginality and knowing that we take care of everybody in our family and everybody in our community and we acknowledge everybody and there's a collective decision-making. But that is not the same standard outside of us and it's also you's a. There's a totally different version of traditional values that I see that people are fighting for. That, we've seen, also are not very effective. They're only really effective for one group of people and that's usually a group of people who are middle-aged white men, to be quite frank, some of whom, I have realized, are starting to feel like they're the most oppressed person on the planet currently, which also I don't believe is true.
Speaker 3:Um, and it's just that, hey, I've got a, I don't have any elbow room anymore, um, and I've got to speak a lot louder than what I usually have to because I've got to share space with other people I agree, I was, you know, I do find very, I find it really difficult to understand where people are coming from, where, I guess again where men are coming from, who do feel devalued and who do feel like the world is now passing them by and they can't participate in it.
Speaker 3:Because I think there's so much information available and there's so many, you know, there's so many stories to listen to and research to read, and so much information available that you know that shows structural inequalities, that shows, you know, the injustice that people have, you know, across a spectrum of, yeah, a spectrum of different people that they have experienced through their life and that that has led to people being marginalised and sort of worse off.
Speaker 3:It's just a willful blindness to what's actually out there, I feel like, and an entitlement that I deserve this purely because of my skin colour and what's between my legs, and I find it really difficult to understand. I find it really difficult to understand. I find it really difficult to empathise with and I would say I'm a fairly empathetic person but and as a mother of two sons, I don't know how people can square that circle where they are then putting their kids in that, giving their kids that view that they are entitled to more than anyone else. You know that my two sons are entitled to more than my daughter, or that view that they are entitled to more than anyone else. You know that my two sons are entitled to more than my daughter, or that my two sons are entitled to more than you know, than your two daughters, you know, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:I just but this is what this feeds into, this discourse and and these, these comments from our leaders feed into that I want to go back to the education element and, talking about what makes people uncomfortable, I always reference the US one because my partner's American and I have two daughters who are also American. So pay close attention to what's happening over there, but also paying close attention because that influence has travelled, and a bit stupidly actually. So when you think that people should know better, you see that I guess that rhetoric somehow finds its way onto our shores and then it's picked up, unfortunately, by some of our leaders. So if I go back to the critical race theory that nobody wants to talk about, I'm looking at our education and we actually haven't done any truth-telling in our education. To begin with, I left primary school, you know, in the 80s and I actually wasn't. I didn't learn the history of Australia, same.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:In fact, I learnt a very one-sided view of what happened in our own history. So, when it comes to indoctrination, mate, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? We've been indoctrinated.
Speaker 3:For what are you talking about? What are you talking about? We've been indoctrinated for generations now, haven't we?
Speaker 2:yes, it's like hey you know what, if, like, if you let's talk about it, we would love. We would love for everyone to be educated by our community standards, because then everybody would care about everybody that understand the true history of australia and they would understand that they know here's the true history and let's make sure that never happens again. That's my community standard, that's. That's that's the community that I came from and I could probably you know there's so many other communities too that feel that way. Now, the community standard that Doug is talking about is it the? Is that is that you know shorthand. For I don't. We don't want to teach anybody that makes other people feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 3:Well, that makes the majority feel uncomfortable right. I don't care if there's an Aboriginal kid in the class who's going. No, 200 years ago was not when Australia started. Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:There seems to be a very common experience with lots of female teachers who are getting frustrated, I guess, with that kind of mob mentality of boys coming together, adolescent boys, coming together and behaving without respect, without boundaries and just being not only misogynistic, in the very least disrespectful towards a lot of different people in the school, particularly girls and women, whether that's commentary, whether that's crossing boundaries with the teachers in what they're saying, or proximity. I think it's becoming a real problem. So I'm trying to understand where it's come from and I'm trying to really understand. You know, like we're talking about traditional values and people feel like traditional values are getting lost, or their traditional values are getting lost, or their traditional values are getting lost and now the roles are shifting.
Speaker 2:I think that gender equality has moved somewhat faster over the last couple of years and I think the progress for women has moved relatively quickly. There's lots more to go, don't get me wrong. I think that's shifted the balance for many men in society. Where they're going hang on a minute, uh, where, where do I fit now? Like, what's my job?
Speaker 3:I have a hard time empathizing to, to be honest yeah, I was, um, listening to shout out to one of my favorite podcasts if books could kill. One of the co-hosts was talking about, uh, talking about, you know, masculinity and and the different ways that gender norms, I suppose, show up in different communities all around the world. And uh was sort of starting some research from different communities where, you know, researchers would go in and sort of ask so what's the male role in your society, what's the female role? And that people would be genuinely confused because there was no difference between men and women and and how that sort of translates to sexuality and all sorts of things as well.
Speaker 3:It just it's. It's such a nice reminder that the dominant way of thinking in western culture is just one way of thinking, it's one way of living, it's one way of being, and that that's. It's not the be-all and end-all, and that we do need to look to other cultures, other societies, to grow and to become better humans, because no girl is born, you know, and has to go straight to the kitchen, you know, or straight to the laundry, or you know, like that's just not the way it is.
Speaker 2:I think about what I would have to tell my child if I knew that was going to be the life for her, and I know that that's been the life that so many women have had to lead. I can't give a male's perspective on this and I can only you know, based on reading and looking around, on kind of gathering my own opinions. But is it that men were constantly thinking that they grow up and they get a job and they provide for family and they lead, and now does that script no longer apply? And is that, I guess, on more people? And has that now flowed onto the younger men where we're now?
Speaker 3:they're looking to places for role models and then they're going onto those crazy podcasts, of which it's conservative podcasts and media is so much more prevalent and available and accessible now than liberal sort of more left-wing views as well. I saw something the other day. It was only Noah Taylor, I think, was the only sort of left-wing podcast host or key media person at the moment who was in the top ten of the most listened to sites and things like that, and that in itself is concerning, because that's then where people have to search out to find different opinions and you know more liberal opinions as well.
Speaker 2:And so if there are, if there are people, if there are men that are struggling with that um, that place and that purpose because they're having to share um so much of those that space and responsibilities, even family responsibilities, whatever it might be, I guess that uncertainty, with this resentment building and shame and confusion, and again I can't relate.
Speaker 2:I cannot and again, I can only read and go really Okay, really Okay, like we can't just move past it and evolve and grow some emotional intelligence. But what's happening is that, rather than growing that emotional intelligence and um, but, but what's happening is that, rather than growing that emotional intelligence and finding a way and creating new, a new space for everybody, it's now young men are listening to people who go oh, you feel powerless, women are to blame. Um, yeah, not respected. Then you just have to dominate and be the louder voice or feeling uncertain, don't, don't be vulnerable, take control, you're in charge. Uh, be the loud voice and it's, it's obnoxious, and then guess who has to deal with the front of it. Yeah, yeah, you think about schools.
Speaker 2:I think, like all of the all of the conversation I've had about toxic masculinity and young men and students in schools are all from female teachers, and they're the ones that are struggling with it the most, yet they're the ones that have the ability to deal with it, and I say ability One. It's not our responsibility and it's not their responsibility. But as teachers, you want to make sure that you're growing good human beings and trying to make the world around you a better place. But what power do they have to make any changes with those young men, particularly when they are so driven by the group, the mob?
Speaker 3:but norell dutton says that teachers have all the power. They're just indoctrinating kids left, right and center. So you know how could this be possible?
Speaker 2:I I just, I I'm just stuttering, I don't, I don't have any, I don't have any, I don't have any words. He makes no sense For me. I'm just like hey, mate, just tell us your policies. You know, we don't need to do all this other shit where you're trying to frighten the shit out of people. We don't need to do that. I need to bring Jacinta along to say she's going to do an audit of Aboriginal programs and to make Australia great again. Sis, when's Australia been great for you? Are you out of your mind? What the actual hell is she talking about? I just shake my head and go. Surely no one's listening to this. Surely we're all smart at this. I think we're smarter than this. The problem is that I don't think Peter Dutton thinks that.
Speaker 3:I think he thinks we're stupid at and thinks that I think he thinks we're stupid. Or, like Trump, he loves the uneducated because less chance to question.
Speaker 2:If we keep people in a state where they are not able to critically assess information or digest it, absorb it. It really is just like critical thinking skills. That's a really big thing, that's a really big part of our curriculum. Then if we don't have that, then we won't question stupid things that he says. What are we doing right now?
Speaker 3:Hey guys, thanks for listening. Wildfire is about sparking meaningful conversations that matter to Ember Connect's members and allies. This podcast creates a space to amplify voices, share stories and explore topics that drive change, connection and personal and professional growth. By bringing these conversations to life, we aim to inspire action, deepen understanding and strengthen the collective impact of the ember connect network. A huge thanks to our guests for sharing their knowledge, insights, time and passion. Yeah, no wonder I want to rant Coffee shit.
