Friday, 14 November 2025

 Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (21:17): (2118) My matter is for the Minister for Education regarding the material being taught in our government schools. The action I seek is for the minister to urgently investigate the circulation of unauthorised teaching materials aimed at promoting political activism in Victorian schools and ensure that classrooms remain places of learning, not ideological indoctrination. It has come to light that a rogue group of teachers is distributing a 15-page guide encouraging staff to teach children as young as three years of age that Palestinians are ‘dying because the country is being attacked by Israel’. This is not education, it is radicalisation. The guide shows how teachers can wear political symbols in the classrooms and how to embed anti-Israel rhetoric into subjects like health, PE and science, and it even instructs kindergarten educators to tell toddlers that Palestinians are ‘hungry, sad and dying’. Teachers are being asked to report how they have used the guide to ‘break the silence on Palestinian genocide’. This is deeply disturbing. Our schools should be safe, inclusive environments where students are taught to think critically, not be fed a one-sided political narrative. The complexity of the Middle East deserves balanced, age-appropriate discussion, not propaganda disguised as curriculum. The Department of Education has rightly called this behaviour ‘regrettable’, but words are not enough. Opposition spokesperson my colleague next door Jess Wilson, the member for Kew, said it best:

If hatred is allowed to fester in schools, it will only end up as more violence on our streets.

The Australian Education Union has not endorsed this guide, yet some members are promoting it. This raises serious questions about oversight, accountability and the role of unions in our classrooms. I call on the minister to take decisive action immediately, identify where these materials are being used, hold those responsible to account and reaffirm that political activism has no place in Victorian classrooms, especially not kindergartens – yes, kindergartens. Are these people really educators or activists? Radicalisation that starts in the classroom never ends in the classroom. We have seen that very clearly in recent days outside on the steps of Parliament, in the streets of Melbourne and in the condemnation from senior police command of these activists’ violence. If we fail to act now, we risk compromising the integrity of our education system and the wellbeing of our children.