Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ is one of the most important pieces of philosophy ever written. It demonstrates that people can be convinced that they are seeing reality rightly, even when in actual fact, they are chained in an allegorical cave, and the sum total of their reality is watching shadows on a wall. How hard it is to lead people out of their comfortable reliable shadowland and into the blinding but beautiful reality of the truth.

During the course of my teaching degree, we spent very little time on philosophy. The single course on it gave mere minutes to Plato, opting to commit most of its time to the more recent and radical work of Rosseau before Freire, Derrida and Foucault.

So, like most teachers, I only ever engaged with what it meant to be a teacher in a shallow and relativistic way. In fact, I was five years working in education before I asked one of the most important questions an educator should ask: “What is the purpose of education?”

Four years of university and five years of practice did not lead me to ask this question. I was quite happy enjoying my work, teaching students in media and drama, making movies and producing plays, never considering what the real intended end of education actually was.

It wasn’t until I was introduced to the concept of the Liberal Arts when I first heard about the important work of Campion College in Sydney that I realised that maybe there was something more to education than hanging out with teenagers making movies. I was encouraged to read what might be C.S. Lewis’ most important and under-read work, The Abolition of Man.  Once I did, it forced me to reconsider how I thought about education. This is an immensely important book, and if you do not own a copy, I encourage you to find one and read it. And then read it again.

I begin with this personal anecdote to demonstrate the foundation of everything written below. I believe that there is an objective, real purpose to education. I believe this because I believe that the world has been created teleologically – that is – with intended ends and purposes. I believe this because I believe in a God of order, not chaos; a God who creates with purpose.

This is a not a conviction shared by most teachers. Nor is it shared by parents, or students, or our parliamentarians. In fact, this is not even necessarily a conviction shared by all Christians, mainly because it is rarely given any thought. If this is something you have not considered before, I challenge you to consider it now: just as there is an objectively real purpose to humanity – an objective anthropology of what it means to be human – there is also an objective purpose for education.

The question of redeeming the national curriculum, therefore, means asking a particular logical question. Can the content of the Australian Curriculum fit within and serve the purpose of true education?

To answer this, I need to provide a brief overview of what the curriculum is, and while these details might seem boring, this actually really matters. It is too often the case that people complain about something without really knowing what they’re talking about. You cannot afford this error. If you are one of the many who are frustrated by the curriculum, you must do your due diligence and seek to understand it.

So what is the Australian curriculum? Since starting in 2009, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority has had the task to oversee the implementation of a nationwide curriculum, and it has been implemented in all states and territories since 2014. While each state implements it in their own way, they base their state curriculum on the national one, meaning that while state to state there are differences, there is a general coherence amongst them. It is important to note as well that the requirement for national alignment is specifically for Prep to Year 10. Senior schooling is managed state to state, and what I am writing here therefore does not pertain to Years 11 and 12.

A quick online search for ACARA will help you find the curriculum website, in all of its detail. While the detail might be overwhelming, it is fairly logical and easy to follow, and therefore if you’re curious about any details, I recommend looking into it yourself. In summary, though, the Australian curriculum is currently made up of 16 subjects: English, Maths, Science, History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship, Economics and Business, Health and Physical Education, Digital Technologies, Design Technologies, Languages, Dance, Drama, Visual Art, Media Arts and Music.

Each subject is described using two major subsections: Achievement Standards, which is what students should be able to do or know by the end of a given year; and Content Descriptors, which are the more specific details of the achievement standards – the general content to be taught. Within these, there are even more detailed elements called Elaborations. On top of this and covered across all Learning Areas there are three Cross-Curricula Priorities, which are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures; Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia; and Sustainability.  There are also seven General Capabilities that the curriculum is supposed to inculcate: Critical and Creative Thinking; Digital Literacy; Ethical Understanding; Intellectual Understanding; Literacy, Numeracy; and Personal and Social Capability.

I’m sure you’ll agree that this is a lot of information. This point alone really highlights the fact that schools have in recent years become much more than simply teachers of reading, writing and arithmetic. Usually when there is some kind of new social issue, it is foisted upon schools to somehow fix it. But when it comes to the essentials of implementing the curriculum, it’s really the Achievement Standards and Content Descriptors that outline what is required in schools. Different schooling sectors (government, Catholic and independent) have their own systems and processes for demonstrating alignment, but the fundamental and non-negotiable elements are usually those standards and descriptors.

In a nutshell, that is the Australian Curriculum. Chances are you may have heard people attacking it, maybe you have attacked it yourself. Maybe you’ve spoken to teachers and they’ve complained about it, perhaps even invoking it as a scape goat as to what is wrong with our education system. This is why it is important to ask whether or not it can be redeemed. After all, from listening to a lot of the public commentary, apparently it is one of the root causes of all problems in Australian education.

So, is this accurate, or can it be redeemed? Can it fit within and serve the purpose of true education?

We now must define the second part of the question, that is, the purpose of education. There is a lot of judgment currently aimed at Australian education – and rightly so. But you cannot judge something unless you know its purpose. We all do judge things, and when we do, we invariably judge them according to what we have determined their purpose to be. Whether you realise it or not, this is almost always your metric for judgement. For example, if you own a watch and claim that it is a ‘bad’ watch, what you’re really saying is: a) this is a watch; b) the purpose of a watch is to tell time; c) this watch does not tell the time accurately enough to be considered a good watch. You see immediately that the judgment is predicated on a belief about purpose.

Likewise, if we judge a school or an entire educational system, we’re judging based on what we believe the purpose of education to be. So, what might this purpose be? I’m sure that if you speak to your friends and your children, or if you listen to politicians or commentaries, you’ll soon recognise that the assumed purpose of education in our society is something like, “To help my kids get good grades, to get into a good uni, to get a good job, to make good money.” In other words, the purpose of education is primarily to serve and economic or utilitarian function. 

Of course, there is also the other increasingly common answer – that of making my child happy. Unfortunately, this happiness is very often short sighted and ill defined, and what it ends up meaning in practice is nothing more than the avoidance of pain. This is a vital point, because in schools the avoidance of pain can quickly become avoiding the pain of hard work – the very hard work that is required to achieve good grades. Considering that our standards have been declining steadily according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), perhaps this paradox is partly to blame. We have two unspoken but tacitly accepted goals of education: 1) to keep students happy, and 2) for them to get good grades.  How are we to achieve both these goals? One of the most immediately achievable responses is to make the grades easier to achieve.

But neither of these are the highest possible purpose for education. Returning to the book that changed my thinking; in The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis traces this question of educational purpose through history. He summarises his thinking using the Augustinian concept of ordo amoris. Ordo Amoris means ordinate affection; it means loving the right things in the right ways at the right times in the right amounts. This, for Aristotle, is the definition of virtue, and I believe it is the full, true, and objective end of education – the right ordering of our loves.

The Victorian writer John Ruskin put it like this: 

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things — not merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

[ Ruskin, John. Selections and Essays. NY: Dover Publications, 2013, p.292. ]

This is the true purpose of education, and because it is the truest highest purpose, those secondary sub-purposes will naturally fit within it. A student who has achieved this, will also be highly employable, will work hard to achieve their best results, and will be truly happy – not just fleetingly content because they’re not being challenged. All other possible purposes of education are achieved if we form young people who love learning, who love truth, beauty, and goodness, who love reality rightly, which of course includes loving God.

The question now is whether what is contained within the national curriculum is diametrically opposed to this vision of education. And the answer is that it is not.  These ends – this lofty worthy goal of humanity – is absolutely achievable within the confines of the Australian Curriculum.

This is not necessarily because the national curriculum shares this philosophy of education. It is not necessarily designed with this end in mind. However, the scope of the curriculum is broad.  It has been designed with room for schools to implement it in ways that align to their own cultural convictions.

And this is the vital point: the curriculum is one thing, the implementation of it is something else entirely. In every situation, a school or teacher passes the curriculum through their own interpretative lens. A good illustration might be all the different nuances in different churches; they’ve all got the same book, but they all pass it through their own lens and end up in slightly, sometimes extremely, different places.

Likewise, all schools start with the same curriculum, but this does not mean that they all implement it the same way. Just think about the variance in schooling that we know exists. They all start with the same document, but there are significant differences from school to school, not only in outcomes, but even in content and focus.

Take, as an example, a new school planning to open in Brisbane in 2026, called St John Henry Newman College. The board of the college would not be starting an independent Catholic classical school if they did not believe it possible to work within the national curriculum and still achieve their vision. But it is. Taken from the tombstone of Newman and representing the wonderful interplay between faith and reason by drawing from the image of Plato’s Cave as well as the journey of faith, the school’s motto is ex umbris in veritatem – out of shadows into truth. We believe not only that this is the purpose of education, but that this education can take place within the national curriculum.

All this being said, however, it must also be stated that the curriculum is not perfect. However, we must also recognise that firstly: we do not have a choice, and secondly: it could be a lot worse. It is true that many have argued – myself included – that it spends far too much time in some areas while others are completely neglected. However this leads to another important note to recognise. Just because something is not mentioned in the curriculum does not mean that it cannot be taught. The national curriculum is a minimum, not a maximum. For example, it is disappointingly true that the history curriculum, particularly in primary school, is woefully lacking. But just because there are no references to Ancient Greece or Rome, or indeed any country other than Australia (other than some potential references to England as a colonising force) across all Primary school, this does not mean these things cannot be taught. A school can find ways to include them. The curriculum does not necessarily force exclusion of elements, only inclusion of elements.

So yes, there are issues with the curriculum. Yes, overall it probably does lean more towards the left than the right, but if you went and read it for yourself, you might be surprised that it is not what you might think. Regardless, we cannot lose sight of reality that the curriculum cannot be outright rejected. If you want to send your students to a school in Australia, it must implement the national curriculum. Even alternative schools like Montessori, Steiner and International Baccalaureate need to demonstrate to ACARA how they meet the national curriculum requirements.

So, if the curriculum is not the main problem, what does this mean for the legitimate concerns you may have about what is being taught in your child’s school? 

It means that it is the school, that is, either the board, the principal, the head of studies, or the teacher, that is responsible for the choices made in interpreting the curriculum. Not only is it too easy to blame the curriculum, but it is too ineffectual. It will get you nowhere. If you’re unhappy with a novel set for reading, don’t blame the Australian Curriculum; there is not a single novel mandated by it. That was a decision someone in your schooling system made.

So, can the national curriculum be redeemed? Yes. It can. While it does hold a lot of power and has a significant impact, still the national curriculum should not be used as an excuse for what may or may not be happening in your child’s school.

I will conclude on a slightly different note, because irrespective of everything written above, it is true that the curriculum and its implementors have significant impact and power when it comes to young people. I would argue that this is not because of the curriculum and educator sector per se, but rather it is because our society has lost sight of the truth that it is the parents – not the government – that are children’s primary educators. I realise we live in a world where not only has this truth been generally ignored and supressed, but also where it has been made extremely difficult. But it is nonetheless your responsibility. If you don’t like what is happening in your school, what will you do about it? And please, do something more than just complain, or at least complain with a gracious heart. Investigating claims made by your children while assuming the best of your school is a good place to start. This investigation may of course become a complaint. There is nothing wrong with making a complaint, but at some point it may become clear that complaining might not achieve the change you want, and you need to consider the enrolment of your child.

Yes, you should speak up if you’re sending your child to a Christian school and they’re receiving an education oppositional to Christianity. But how long will you complain before making a more dramatic move? One thing that must be considered is whether you have become too willing to settle and accept issues with your children’s education for any number of other positive benefits. Perhaps you’ve made a tacit agreement in your head to accept teaching you don’t agree with because it’s a prestigious school, or because of sporting or artistic opportunities, or because your kids have good friends there. How much do you need to reconsider the purpose of education, and after having done so, reconsider the choices you’ve made about your child’s schooling?

The Australian Curriculum is not a roadblock that is impossible to overcome. The curriculum should not be used as an excuse or scape goat for why true education is not possible at your school. In fact, I would argue that in its current form the curriculum is actually an opportunity.

There are other more fundamental issues that impact education, and that is because these issues impact that vital point of ‘interpretation and implementation’. These issues include initial teacher education – what happens in universities trains the next generation of curriculum interpreters; the lowering of standards within universities and the repetitive cycle of students that become teachers that educate the next round of students that become teachers; the state of the university sector in general; and as already hinted at, the ever-growing burden for schools to become more than educational facilities, meaning curriculum and teaching decisions get pushed further down the priority list.

Two of the biggest issues, however, do not rest with the government or institutions, but with parents. These are within parents’ control, and blaming the government, or expecting politics to come to the rescue will be to no avail. The first issue – and I believe the most pressing – is the impact of mobile phones, the internet, and social media. Throughout my time in school leadership, I would suggest that over 90% of major behavioural issues were either caused by or at least significantly exacerbated by mobile phone use. The other major issue is parents who treat the school as a day care centre, completely disengaged from their child’s education and formation.

Have you thought seriously about the purpose of education? If nothing else after reading this, I hope that you might give some thoughtful attention to these questions. Why are you sending your children to school? If you are not interested in moral formation and want their schooling to be purely about attaining skills to get a job, unfortunately such a vision is impossible. There is no such thing as value neutral education. The question is what and whose values are being imparted.

This is why there is a growing movement in Australia seeking to return to traditional classical Liberal education. It is why there are schools starting in Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, and Brisbane that have a different vision of education than mere job-preparation. It is why it matters to think deeply about education. It has been said that politics is downstream of culture. If this is true, I would add that culture is downstream of education. 

What happens in classrooms, six hours a day, five days a week, forty weeks of the year, for thirteen of the most formative years of a person’s life, is forming your child and forming a generation. What happens in those classrooms matters, and that is why so many of us are invested in the classical renewal, and that is why it is vital that parents never abandon their role as primary educators.

Yes, the national curriculum can be redeemed, but it needs people to redeem it. That’s why classical schools like St John Henry Newman College are starting – to commit to fulfilling the true purpose of education, to instil wisdom and virtue, and, as our motto states, to guide young people out of shadows and into truth.