There are some things in this world that everyone is an expert on. Politics is one, education is another. The federal government, out of humility or perhaps popularism, is inviting opinion on what should be taught in Australian schools.

Details of the draft K-10 Australian curriculum in English, mathematics, science and history, were posted yesterday at www.australiancurriculum.edu.au. Already there has been much discussion at the professional level, with a general ''thumbs up'' being given to the draft curriculum by most of the relevant teacher associations.

We need a national curriculum. It is absurd for a country of 22 million people to have nine different curriculums. Some 80,000 children move interstate each year, and the level of disconnection they have to experience, in this increasingly mobile age, is unacceptable.

Even so, there will be a resigned weariness among many teachers in having to accommodate yet more curriculum change. The capacity for educational bureaucrats to justify their existence by fiddling with what should be taught in schools is legendary. The cynicism engendered from yet another breathless pronouncement of educational reform is understandable. However, this time it is reasonable to hope that introducing a national curriculum will serve to stimulate teachers with new challenges and enrich them with useful professional development experiences. In short, I think this initiative deserves to be taken seriously.

The national curriculum aims to cover less material but in greater depth. This will be welcome news to many teachers now engaged in frantic topic-hopping as they seek to cover the wide breadth of material in the existing curriculum. We need to study less in order to learn more.