The Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom

Why a university education is no longer worth the money wasted on it

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." – John Dewey 1916

I’m a cancelled academic who worked on the so-called “curriculum transformation team” at a major Australian university. The irony? I was sacked for “breaching all of the university’s DEI policies,” which, in plain English, means I committed the heinous crime of pointing out that DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is mindless ideological authoritarian bullshit that stands in direct opposition to everything higher education once represented. Universities, the very places that should be devoted to free inquiry and the pursuit of truth, have devolved into ideological indoctrination camps. And it’s postmodernism that has brought this intellectual collapse crashing down on all of us.

Australian universities—once, ostensibly, bastions of intellectual rigour—have now fallen completely under the thrall of this ideology. The so-called “curriculum transformation” of the mid-2010s was nothing more than a sleight of hand. They sold it to teachers and administrators as a leap forward for “equity,” another hollow and misunderstood buzzword. What did this transformation really mean? It meant gutting the curriculum of any real intellectual substance and replacing it with social media apps, iPads, and a dumbing down of content so profound that it makes one wonder if universities are now simply glorified high schools.

Take the much vaunted final "Capstone" subject of the ‘‘new degrees, which had the potential to be brilliant—a written thesis or a magnum opus that demonstrated the culmination of a student’s intellectual journey. Instead, it was reduced to a dull, formulaic “research project” barely distinguishable from a Year 10 diary entry, where perfect referencing is the key to high marks, not actual critical thought. A tragedy, yes, but that’s only scratching the surface.

The real danger was far more insidious: a new decree that all references in academic work must be no more than ten years old. On the surface, this might seem like a call for relevance and modernity, but it’s a knife aimed at the heart of intellectual tradition. Seminal works like Nancy Roper’s Roper–Logan–Tierney Model of Nursing, which underpinned nursing theory all around the western world for over forty years, were tossed aside because they didn’t fit the arbitrary timeline. Nancy Roper died in 2004—too old, too irrelevant. Never mind that her work is just as valid today as it was when it was first introduced. It’s out with the old and in with the new, no matter how vacuous or ideologically driven that “new” might be.

Consider, if you will, the full implications of this in other fields. To forbid referencing the seminal works of Marx, Einstein, Dewey, Freud, Weber, Keynes, Friedman, Piaget, Carr, Hobsbawm, Gould, Dawkins, Hart, Woolf, Greer, Orwell, Rawls, Vygotsky and Arendt is not only idiotic, it’s academic arson. These foundational texts - all more than 10 years old - haven’t been surpassed—they’ve shaped entire disciplines. This bureaucratic absurdity condemns students to wallow in mediocrity, denying them access to foundational works in most, if not all, key fields of study. It’s a triumph of ignorance over scholarship, an asinine decree that obliterates wisdom in favor of the latest fad.

This cynical move is part of a broader agenda though, to elevate postmodernist nonsense—the works of queer theorists and their ilk—into the spotlight while discrediting any research that dares to challenge this ideological wave. The books haven’t been burned, not literally. Instead, they’ve been erased by this toxic mantra: “New is good, old is bad.” Academics, administrators, and students have been hoodwinked, believing this garbage under the guise of progress.

Many argue that universities were once hotbeds of Marxist thought and ‘radical leftist ideology’, and that the current wave of postmodernism is simply a natural progression of this. But nothing could be further from the truth. Marxism, for all its flaws and controversies, is deeply rooted in materialism and reality. It operates in the realm of concrete struggles, class, and economic forces. Postmodernism, by contrast, is a direct rejection of those very principles. It’s an ideology that shuns the material world in favour of subjective realities, where facts, truth, and even biological sex are no longer fixed. 

What we are witnessing in Australian universities is not a continuation of ‘radical leftism’, but an authoritarian, cult-like ideology far more aligned with the extreme libertarian fringes. Postmodernism, if anything, bears a closer resemblance to the far-right: it elevates the individual as sacrosanct, allowing people to create their own reality at the expense of everyone else. In this sense, postmodernism is not the evolution of Marxist thought—it’s the antithesis of it. It dismisses class struggle and shared reality in favour of a fractured, atomized society where personal whims override collective well-being. This is not progressive; it is profoundly regressive and dangerous.

The infection of postmodernism has now spread far beyond the humanities and social sciences—it has corrupted the very foundations of education itself. The entire system is now compromised, with universities, the supposed bastions of intellectual rigour, leading the charge in dismantling reason and objectivity. Education in Australia no longer values knowledge or truth. Instead, it promotes a hollow, narcissistic culture where feelings are prioritised over facts, and ideology trumps evidence.

This is a tragedy of monumental proportions because it is in universities where teachers are trained and educational theory is developed. The rot in higher education spreads downward, infecting primary and secondary schools, perpetuating a vicious cycle of ignorance and intellectual decay. The problem with postmodernist control of universities isn’t just that it erases intellectual diversity—it has rendered the entire institution of education impotent. Universities should be leading the way in resetting our broken systems, but they are too far gone to even recognize the need for it.

In the past decade, we’ve lost our best educators and thinkers. Whether cancelled, forced into early retirement, made redundant, or driven out by the sheer insanity that has taken hold, these intellectual casualties are irreplaceable. What we have left is a wasteland where only the ideologically compliant survive. We’ve sacrificed genuine scholarship and rigorous debate for echo chambers filled with sycophants parroting the latest postmodern talking points. 

We don’t just need to reform the education system; we need a revolution in education—a return to reason, to objectivity, and to the pursuit of real knowledge, not ideological conformity.. A return to basics, where two plus two does indeed equal four, and where the pursuit of knowledge is based on reality, not fashionable delusions and research funded by invested parties. What is required is a revival of the principles that once defined higher education—critical thinking, intellectual diversity, a commitment to truth and academic freedom unshackled to ideological funders of research. The first step in this process is recognizing that the universities, which were supposed to be the heart of this intellectual mission, have instead become the problem.

Postmodernism isn’t, as some suggest, the inevitable decay of Marxism; it’s the complete inversion of it. If anything, postmodernism is an extreme right-wing, authoritarian cult cloaked in radical chic, driven by a kind of extreme libertarianism that elevates the individual to a near godlike status. In this warped ideology, the individual makes up their own rules, their own facts, their own biological sex, and everyone else must comply—no questions asked. What we’re dealing with here isn’t some continuation of revolutionary thought; it’s a bizarre hybrid of intellectual fascism wrapped in the language of social justice.

The current landscape of academia, dominated by identity politics, self-indulgent theorising, and the rejection of reality, is a grave threat to the future of education. Universities, once the vanguard of intellectual development, have become ideological indoctrination camps. To fix this, we must acknowledge the corruption and infection that has taken hold and demand a return to foundational principles. A root and branch reform of research funding must happen.

Academic research funding desperately needs a complete overhaul. The current model, where interested parties like Big Pharma or tech giants fund research directly tied to their industries, has turned academic inquiry into a puppet show, with strings firmly in the hands of corporate interests. If Big Pharma, for example, wants to fund universities, their money should be funnelled into departments that are completely unrelated to their commercial goals—into the arts, humanities, etc., or better still, put all funding into one main pot and share it out among the disciplines without the funders having any say whatsoever, so that they cannot directly influence the outcomes. This separation would still allow industries to contribute to academia while ensuring that their funds do not corrupt scientific or academic integrity. The core purpose of academia should be the pursuit of knowledge and truth, not serving the financial interests of its sponsors. By removing direct oversight and influence from funders, we can restore objectivity and credibility to academic research, protecting it from becoming a marketing arm for corporate giants.

Universities are no longer intellectual sanctuaries. They’re wastelands where the basic tenets of education have been sacrificed at the altar of ideological conformity. Where are the rigorous debates? Where is the pursuit of knowledge? Gone. Replaced with performative activism and mind-numbing groupthink. The very places that should lead the charge in setting society right are the ones dragging it down into the muck.

And let’s not delude ourselves into thinking the rot stops at higher education. It infects the entire system. Universities train the teachers. If universities are sick, the poison flows into primary and secondary education, creating a vicious cycle of intellectual decay. In the past decade, we’ve lost some of our best teachers and educators—cancelled, retired, made redundant, or driven out by the sheer madness that has taken hold of academia. Those who remain are left navigating a minefield of ideological purity tests, terrified of saying anything that might violate the ever-shifting DEI codes. 

The future of education—and society itself—depends on a return to intellectual rigour and a rejection of postmodern delusions. But the revolution won’t happen within the confines of the current university system. That system is too corrupt, too ideologically captured. What we need is a revolution in education, one that puts reality, truth, and knowledge back at the centre of the mission. The longer we allow postmodernism to hold sway, the more we doom future generations to ignorance and intellectual impoverishment.

This isn’t just a crisis in the academy. It’s a crisis in our society. If we want to save education, we need to wake up to the fact that universities, the institutions that should be leading us out of this darkness, are, in fact, leading us into it.

We ignore the wisdom of older, experienced educators at our peril. We are the people who have seen the evolution of education over decades, who understand the foundational principles that made learning a meaningful and transformative process. Casting us aside in favour of trendy, untested ideologies is not just disrespectful, it was criminal and destructive. The erasure of our expertise has led us to this intellectual wasteland, where ideology trumps knowledge and the pursuit of truth is secondary to political agendas. If we continue down this path, we risk losing the very essence of what education is meant to be—a place where knowledge, rigour, and reason reign supreme. We must return to valuing those who built the pillars of our educational system before the last vestiges of true learning are erased.

It is time to act now. Quickly, decisively, and with absolute ruthlessness; failure to do so will leave us with an irretrievable loss of intellectual integrity and the complete collapse of our educational system.

Footnotes:

1. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan, 1916..

2. Nancy Roper, The Roper-Logan-Tierney Model of Nursing (Churchill Livingstone, 1996).

3. Terry Eagleton, After Theory (Penguin Books, 2004), 37.

4. Kathleen Lynch, "New Managerialism, Neo-Liberalism and the Dehumanising of Public Education," International Journal of Educational Research 53, no. 1 (2012): 1-12.

5. Walter Truett Anderson, The Future of the Self: Inventing the Postmodern Person (Tarcher/Putnam, 1997), 12.