Why Modern Education Is Producing Activists, Not Thinkers | Prof. Simon Haines and Dr. Fiona Mueller
About this episode
John Anderson discusses the decline of critical thinking in education with Prof. Simon Haines and Dr. Fiona Mueller.
In this conversation, John Anderson sits down with Prof. Simon Haines and Dr. Fiona Mueller to examine how Australia's schools and universities stopped teaching children how to think, and what a genuine restoration of education would look like. The results are measurable in falling literacy, rising school refusal, and a curriculum that has prioritised ideological formation at the expense of knowledge.From the classical roots of Western education and the Trivium to the ideological capture of teacher training and university management, Haines and Mueller expose the ideas driving the decline and the institutions already proving a better model is possible. What is at stake is not just educational outcomes, but the capacity of the next generation to reason clearly, to govern themselves wisely, and to pass on what they have inherited.Prof. Simon Haines is the Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts at Campion College Australia, Adjunct Professor at the Australian Catholic University, and a founding Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. He previously served as the inaugural CEO of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation and is a Director of Humanities for Life.Dr. Fiona…
People in this episode
Host: John Anderson
Guests: Prof. Simon Haines, Dr. Fiona Mueller
Topics covered
- education
- critical thinking
- curriculum reform
- literacy
- ideological influence
- Western education
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Campion College Australia, Australian Catholic University, Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, Australian National University, Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, Australian Financial Review
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