Drawing on research from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, Mindless exposes how education has been captured by radical ideas that elevate victimhood, identity politics and climate alarmism above learning.

To watch the Sunday morning Cafe Locked Out Rumble podcast with Dr Bella d’Abrera go HERE.

Dr Bella d’Abrera is Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs. She holds a BA in History and Spanish from Monash University, an MA in Spanish from the University of St Andrews, and a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. She has written several books on history, including a trilogy on the English Reformation, and is a founder of History Reclaimed. Her work regularly appears in The Australian, The Spectator Australia, the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph, and she is a frequent commentator on Sky News.

In Mindless: How the Education System is Indoctrinating Children and Destroying Our Civilisation (Wyborn Press, 2026), Dr d’Abrera examines the state of education in Australia, Britain and the United States. She argues that despite substantial increases in government spending, literacy and numeracy results continue to decline. The book contends that schools and teacher training institutions have increasingly prioritised identity politics, decolonisation, victimhood narratives, and climate activism over the teaching of core academic knowledge and critical thinking.

The author looks at how history curricula have shifted toward grievance-based perspectives, the influence of Critical Pedagogy in education faculties, and cases where schools have made significant decisions about children’s social transitions without parental involvement. Dr d’Abrera maintains that children belong to their parents, not the state, and that the current direction of schooling poses risks to both educational standards and the long-term health of Western liberal democracy.

The book was released in April 2026 and has been the subject of a number of well-attended events during the recent Australian book tour. Psychologist Clare Rowe, speaking at the Brisbane launch, described it as “a necessary and important book that will stimulate discussion.” Senator Leah Blyth called it “a must-read for everyone who cares about our children and our civilisation.” In Education Today, Dr Kevin You wrote that it is “a sobering wake-up call” based on extensive research and offers a clear account of the issues facing schools and teacher education.

On the podcast Dr d’Abrera talks about the key findings from her research, observations from the book tour, and what parents, teachers and policymakers might consider in response. 

To purchase Mindless go to the Wyborn Press site: https://wybornpress.com/

Also available from all major online outfits.

For a review of the book from the Institute of Public Affairs go here: https://ipa.org.au/national-curriculum/mindless-book-review

A grim humour is woven into the narrative, highlighting the absurdity of what is actually going on in the educational institutions of core Anglophone nations, particularly the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. Light-hearted passages cut across serious topics, the combination of which allows the reader to ease into complex and highly contested themes.

Around the middle of the book, however, my chuckles gave way to anger, and amusement to horror, as the gravity of what is happening in classrooms across the English-speaking world dawned on me. The book’s exposé of the grotesque material to which children are being exposed lays bare the depravity of many of those who have been entrusted with our children’s and grandchildren’s formative years.