Why what our kids are taught could be a vote changer

If you're a black who is a Republican - as is Winsome Sears, the new Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, or Larry Elder, the Republican challenger for governor in California - then you aren't actually black, you're a white supremacist. Whiteness encompasses what most of the world thinks of as useful characteristics like rational thinking and hard work.

This contradicts the orthodoxy enunciated by Martin Luther King Junior that it is the content of our character, not the colour of our skin that counts. It also contradicts the facts people see in the world around them – if only 5% thinks race is a serious election issue, then they don't see racism baked-in to the world all around them.

Youngkin fought the cultural battle, but without emulating, or endorsing the WWE champion of political pugilism – Donald Trump. He was able to be combative without being boorish or arrogant, and as a result he did much better with key demographics than Trump did, but held onto ones that Trump had won. In particular he did quite well with women, a group to whom education and children are particularly important, but who avoided Trump like the plague.

If education is to be an issue in the next Australian election - and it should be, because the educational establishment here is copying that in the US and undermining the sinews of society - who will fight the fight?

It's unlikely to be Scott Morrison, which brings me to Alan Tudge.

Tudge is the first education minister I can recall who has understood that education has to be about standards, and also world views. He is under-stated, like Youngkin, seems to embody the virtues of "whiteness" and is not afraid to push back against the establishment.

He's rejected the draft Australian Curriculum and given the Australian Curriculum and Review Authority instructions to start over again. He's zoned in on reading, writing and arithmetic as areas where we can demand much more from our children, and where we need to do much better.

But he has also spelled out that while schools should question things, they should overall impart understanding and context which support Australian culture.

He seems to understand that culture, and standard of living, cannot be separated, as most of us also instinctively do. He's also, in echoes of Youngkin's views on CRT, suggested that the racist elements of the curriculum be removed – those parts which mandate that indigenous history has to be taught across all subjects.

This is an antipodean version of CRT which is doubly damaging because it teaches children about a culture which has limited bearing on their daily lives before they even have a functioning understanding of their own culture.

If schooling is not about European cultural values such as excellence, accuracy, testing, punctuality, then it is not fit for purpose in a world where some of the strongest proponents of those values come from Asia.

Morrison has a tin ear for culture, and has thrown away some of the ties to key voters that were in place with his new climate change stance. He needs to build back somewhere else if he wants a chance at a second miracle. Education is one possibility.