Rowan Dean:
I’m delighted now joining us, she hasn’t been here on the set for two … It’s been ages, Bella.
Bella d’Abrera:
It has.
Rowan Dean:
Bella d’Abrera, she’s got a new book out. It’s fantastic. Looks at what’s happening in education. More money being spent, fewer outcomes. The book is called Mindless: How the Education System is Indoctrinating Children and Destroying Our Civilization. It’s available now on Amazon and the Institute of Public Affairs website. I’m delighted to say Bella’s here and I urge people to go and buy the book. It’s fantastic. Here we go. Bella, tell us about your book and tell us the worst things that you discovered.
Bella d’Abrera:
I was worried you were going to ask me that. I don’t think we’ve got time-
Rowan Dean:
Too many. I know. Read the book-
Bella d’Abrera:
Read the book.
Rowan Dean:
Read the book.
Bella d’Abrera:
Look, it was a terrifying experience writing it because it’s a lot worse than I thought it was. I looked at Australia, but I also looked at the US and I looked at the UK and it’s exactly the same system that is being rolled out across the West. It’s a social experiment that has gone terrifyingly wrong.
Rowan Dean:
In all education? Primary or?
Bella d’Abrera:
Kindergarten, primary, secondary, and universities.
Rowan Dean:
Wow.
Bella d’Abrera:
So basically knowledge has been replaced by activism and ideology in all of our countries and children are being completely ruined as a result. They’re being deprived of literacy, numeracy, and also cultural literacy. They don’t know anything about anything. It’s what I call the tyranny of ignorance. So we’re producing generations of young people through no fault of their own who are the true victims of this vast social experiment who are emerging from 12 years at school knowing nothing. We know that it’s not working because our NAPLAN results and our PISA results are getting worse every year. Only 57% of 15 year olds in Australia are able to read to a standard that we have set, only 57% of 15 year olds, and only 51% of children can do maths properly in this country. It’s diabolical.
Rita Panahi:
You say they know nothing, but they do know a fair bit. They could tell you probably 50 different gender identities, and that could tell you about how systematically racist we are and what a horrid history we have and why we shouldn’t celebrate Australia Day. So that knowledge is being replaced by something, and it’s something that is causing these kids, some of them, to just be self-loathing from a very young age.
Bella d’Abrera:
Look, you’re right. They do know a lot, but it’s about gender ideology. It’s about climate change. They can definitely put a protest posted together with some witty slogan. There’s no plan B. Is that the one where there’s no planet B? But they can’t add up. They can’t multiply. They don’t know anything about the world around them in terms of what reality is. And what I point out in the book is they’re being told that knowledge is oppressive. It’s this idea that-
Rowan Dean:
Oppressive? Knowledge is oppressive?
Bella d’Abrera:
Knowledge is oppressive.
Rowan Dean:
Ah, right, right.
Bella d’Abrera:
Well, knowledge in terms of what we understand to be knowledge, so scientific knowledge, maths, literature, history, any of the old knowledge and the old curriculum is no longer considered neutral. It’s considered oppressive and white supremacy. So they’ve taken-
Rowan Dean:
Oh, racist. All knowledge is racist.
Bella d’Abrera:
It’s racist. Knowledge is racist.
Rowan Dean:
Right.
Bella d’Abrera:
So you take that knowledge out, and as Rita points out, you replace it with other knowledge or other knowledges, which are not the Western knowledge that we know to be neutral.
James Morrow:
Well, that brings me to something that I’ve been wondering for a long time about how they also are teaching them not only not the stuff that we all know and is the shared foundation of our shared civilization, but they’re also actively teaching kids to hate Australia. I mean, I’ve spoken to so many parents. I’ve seen this before myself. Kids go in and they are taught to distrust Australia, hate Australian history, think it’s all racist. Also, girls are taught to distrust boys through these relationship curriculums and ultimately parents are kind of turned against their parents through ecological brainwashing and so on and turning the parents into climate criminals. What is being taught in the schools that teaches the teachers that we wind up with teachers who are doing this to our kids?
Bella d’Abrera:
Well, the education departments are probably the most woke and activist university departments in Australia. And this is where the problem began. It began with universities where they suddenly took on this idea of critical theory and decolonization, radical gender theory was all born and created, all this deranged theory was invented in the universities. And that has now found its way remarkably into kindergartens, which most people are now suddenly waking up to. A lot of people are waking up to it because they’re going into the kindergartens and they’re seeing the rainbow bunting. They’re seeing their toddlers being drawn into the process of reconciliation. They’re seeing their children being turned into political activists while they’re still in nappies.
And this is why I had to write the book because while I say a lot of people are waking up, there’s an awful lot of parents out there who still don’t know this is happening. They still think that their children are being educated and being taught how to read and write. Whereas as you say, they’re being turned into climate activists. They’re all suffering from eco-anxiety. This was not a thing 10 or 15 years ago, but they’re being terrified at school. They think the world’s going to end and they think they have to fix it. It’s even worse.
Rita Panahi:
And those views aren’t often being challenged in the home. This is another thing that I talk about constantly where you have people saying, “Oh, well, you know,” even when it comes to Australian politics, “the Liberal Party needs to go more left because look at the new generation.” Then these ideas, these toxic ideas aren’t being challenged at the dinner table because parents, I don’t know, why do you think parents don’t feel confident to say, “No, what you’ve been told isn’t actually accurate. Maybe you should think about this or that.” There seems to be a reluctance from a lot of parents to do that. Not a reluctance, I understand, but it’s definitely evident out there.
Bella d’Abrera:
Well, I think there are a lot of topics where it’s almost impossible to make sense out of it. So take, for example, radical gender theory. It is a very complex and very deranged theory that is almost impossible for people who support the theory to explain. They get mixed up themselves when they’re trying to talk about sex and gender and what you’re assigned at at birth and it’s a social construct, but it is and it isn’t. Same with race. They get themselves into all sorts of mess. So how can parents really make sense of it?
But this is why I wrote the book because you can actually look at the language and know where it’s leading. So for example, when they start talking to your toddlers about identity and where you fit and who you are and how you feel as a … It always leads to radical gender theory. That’s like the path. When your three-year old is being told to put plastic in the right bin and paper in the right bin, that ends up at climate change end of the world is nice stuff. So the book is important because it gives parents the origins of where this comes from and it allows them to understand the language and what is being taught in the school.
Rowan Dean:
It doesn’t give them the tools. You’ve got the great graphic of the hand manipulating, the marionette’s hand manipulating the brain, which is summing up what you’re saying. Does it give parents the tools to fight this stuff, to answer back? To fight that?
Bella d’Abrera:
Yes, it explains why it’s happening, who’s behind it, and it also makes suggestions about what to do about it.
Rowan Dean:
Fantastic.
Bella d’Abrera:
So it’s not just it’s all terrible. It actually gives people hope and it gives them a way forward.
Rowan Dean:
I think there are many, many parents and grandparents who want to be reading this, Mindless by Bella d’Abrera. Thanks, Bella, so much for coming in. I’m certainly going to be reading it. Many people will, and it’s about time this madness stops. Bella d’Abrera, great to have you here on Outsiders.
Bella d’Abrera:
Thank you so much.
Rowan Dean:
As always, after the break, James Truth Bomb explod
