The advent of widespread home schooling in Queensland has revealed curriculum resources that are outraging parents with their claims about the sustainability of beef production.
Slides from an Education Queensland PowerPoint that describe beef production as not sustainable have come to light now that parents are more closely scrutinising what material is available to be taught to their children.
Parents have been flooding the inboxes of opposition MPs with examples of the slides that cast cattle in an environmentally negative light, among them Callide's Colin Boyce.
While acknowledging that teachers had the ability to choose what they wanted to teach from the resources available, Mr Boyce described it as political ideology that had no place in the curriculum.
"Now that they're home schooling, a lot of parents all over the state are starting to view what's being put before their children," he said. "One big argument I have with the education system is that it's not teaching children to be critical thinkers."
AgForce has also been inundated with the material and complaints, and president Georgie Somerset said they would be following it through with Queensland's education department.
"We're surprised by what resources are sometimes there to be accessed," she said.
"We need to see the purpose of the material in the screenshot and the context it was used in, for instance, was it part of a challenge to students.
"AgForce has been in this space for some time but this is a real opportunity for us to see what the messages are, and to follow up.
"If they're not factually correct, the record absolutely has to be corrected."
Ms Somerset said the slides disparaging the role of cattle in a sustainable future could be described as "creeping misinformation".
"It's not completely incorrect but it's all in the way it's interpreted," she said.
The AgForce-facilitated School to Industry Partnership Program, which taught 10,000 children annually where their food and fibre came from, ended in 2018 when the state government failed to renew the $225,000 funding agreement.
Ms Somerset said AgForce continued to populate the Schools to Industry Facebook page with peer reviewed resources and links though, and would continue to do so.
She said because the curriculum being taught in Queensland was the Australian curriculum, the issue around the meat industry and how it was represented was a national one, which meant they would be working with MLA on responses.
Parliament shut down
Mr Boyce's social media post sharing one of the slides had over 72,000 views as well as attracting 500 comments and being shared nearly 230 times.
He said that at this stage there was not a lot he could do about the concerns of the many people who had contacted him, as parliament wasn't sitting.
"There's nothing I can do other than get the message out there," he said.
"Parliament has been basically shut down, except for this week when there will be an omnibus bill relating to COVID-19 issues.
"The government is hiding behind coronavirus - I can't see why we can't sit and debate the business of the state."
Sally Gall
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
