Educated History

During its twenty-two years Melbourne Studies in Education (MSE) has served many masters: the publication of public lectures, staff and visitors’ papers at the Faculty of Education, Melbourne University, thesis work and so on. But the annual has remained loyal to the study of history of education, especially on Australian and South Pacific topics. This has not been accidental as all four editors since 1957-58 have been historians of education. Melbourne Studies in Education 1980 arrives as a monument to the history of education because all seven articles have a strong historical content. But it is history with a difference. The editor, Stephen Murray-Smith, a convert to contemporary history, has invited the Participant-observer in three studies – Kim Beazley’s review of his term as Federal Minister for Education, and Ken Inglis’ and Louis Mathieson’s recollections of their role in the development of higher education in Papua New Guinea. Beazley’s article, subtitled ‘Experience in the Whitlam Government 1972-75’, will attract the greatest interest. It is unusual for a member of an Australian cabinet to commit his memoirs to paper so soon after retirement it is rare to find an assessment of performance by any Minister for Education. Yet being a pioneering venture does not necessarily make it a successful enterprise. Unfortunately, the review becomes a cataloguing of activities, which at times reads with the blandness of the Australian Yearbook. Far better for Beazley to have settled on several major initiatives and provided us with more reflective discussion. Further, Beazley also carries ammunition for those suspicious of ‘participant history’. The account, although a frank exposition of developments, is marred by its self-laudation, personal rancour and omissions of viewpoints or explanations. For instance, Beazley seems bent on settling old scores, some deservedly so (the Liberal party, B.A. Santamaria) some more dubious like the attack on Prime Minister Whitlam The sections on the creation of the Australian Schools Commission and the private schools will be compulsory reading for that dwindling breed of ‘Labor in Power’ watchers. Beazley suggests that the notion of a ‘Needs Basis’ to school aid came to the ALP from the State Ministers for Education Survey 1970; he ignores the party sources, like Whitlam or the late Senator Sam Cohen, Shadow Minister for Education, and their advisers. Also, absent is any discussion on the degree of influence of the ALP’s education policy on the Karmel Committee’s term of reference or the Cabinet’s reluctance to be bound by the party’s primary obligation towards government schools. Indeed, Labor’s acquiescence to the demands of wealthy private schools for the continuation of state aid is the most disappointing part of the article. Beazley blames, in turn, Whitlam for a disputed election promise, and a hostile Senate, which after all, did vote for the Schools Commission. He argues that the wealthy schools were entitled to aid for these above reasons, but then adds his belief the Commonwealth government was there as a ‘new personality’ in education with an obligation to assist the needs of all children. It is this view which demonstrates the Labor government’s relaxation of the notion of needs, while it is through such an escape route, for which Beazley himself must accept responsibility, that the Fraser government has been able to shift the allocation of federal funds towards the more wealthy, less needy, private schools. Finally, what detracts more than anything from his account is Beazley’s pervasive sense of political correctness. Equally Labor’s failures in education are blamed on others. We expect this in the vinegary Clyde Cameron a demoted minister, but it is surprising to find it in a survivor like Beazley, particularly as he is a confessed student of inner contemplation to purge the mind of self-centredness. He is excessively critical of Whitlam, liberated mothers and women and the teachers’ unions. The last category is yet another example of ‘teacher-bashing’. Beazley conveniently forgets the teachers’ unions role in articulating the demands for reform of education, their electoral support of Labor between 1969 and 1975, and the fact that he came to political prominence in Western Australia in the 1940s as a member of the local teachers’ union. In sum, Beazley's review of his term as Minister for Education like his call to government in 1972 is welcome, indeed appropriate. However, his approach in recording it, like his ministerial record, is farraginous, inconsistent and alas, inadequate. Ultimately, he succumbs to those twin demons of political autobiography; self-righteousness and recrimination. From turbulent Canberra of the 1970s to the quieter frontiers of Port Moresby and Lae. MSE 1980 is at its best here with a study in contrasts in the personal histories of the University of Papua New Guinea 1966-76 by Ken Inglis (sometime professor of history and Vice Chancellor at UPNG), and of the establishment of the University of Technology at Lae, l965-75, by Louis Mathieson (the almost first chairman of its governing council). Inglis’ study is a social history of a university. It displays Inglis’ talent for seeing institutional history as the network of relationships ‘in a … particular community.’ In this case it is the shared aspirations, doubts and achievements of a disparate ethnic campus, written in a way. that underplays the administrator’s role. Mathieson, on the other hand, writing as a university leader and visitor to PNG, is concerned to describe the forces and personalities of the haute politique. Certain universities are about people. ‘The most conspicuous are chancellors and vice-chancellors ... but the whole community right down (my emphasis) to the youngest fresher, contributes to the total atmosphere’. But he then dismisses total atmosphere or community and proceeds to the view from the enclosed council room. His discussion on the University of Technology, however, is far from triumphant. For example he argues that if the enquiry to PNG, higher education (the Currie Commission) had done its job properly, by recommending an Australian type university at Waigani (Port Moresby), then the new nation would not have to now bear the luxury of a second and rival university at Lae. With similar directness he sums up the administrative style of the second vice-chancellor (Dr. Sandover) ‘as essentially autocratic and more appropriate to the first Elizabethan age than the second’. Nevertheless, he had more good ideas before lunch than most of his colleagues had in a fortnight. Inglis at the UPNG never resorts to the sledgehammer; instead, he trades in ironies and good humour. Criticisms are veiled in the contradictions which become a university in an emerging neo-colonial society, while vexations are painted in the hues of personality flaws. Thus, on the same page as he describes a 1972 visitor, Ivan Illich, ‘as a mixture of Jesus and Danny Kaye’, he recalls the young Trobriands’ poet, John Kasaipwalova, preaching the overthrow of the university government; although, ‘However he tried, he could not help being convivial’. Inglis values that ethos of conviviality which the campus displayed in the early 1970s. In contrast Mathieson values the ebb and flow of administrative politics in new society. Another perspective on this latter approach can be gauged from B.J. Palmer’s chapter on the educational enquiry to Australia of W.C. Groves in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate during World War II. In an excel-attempts to introduce a general education that was still ‘Christian, liberal and British’, sponsored by government into a disparate school system run by rival Christian missionaries. Groves was unsuccessful because of the exigencies of the Pacific war and the suspicions of the missions. And he was dismissed from his commission in 1946 with the local comment ‘He is a prosy, and narrow-minded man, anyhow, and far too fond of ink’. Groves later had the chance to test his ideas as the Director of Education in Papua New Guinea. The remaining three articles in MSE 1980 take up those areas of neglect in history of Australian education: girls’ schooling and ethnic schooling. Elizabeth Windshuttle explores the dual opportunities for schooling the daughters of the colonial elite in N.S.W. up to 1850; either through home tutoring or increasingly through the ragbag of small private schools which flourished in Sydney after the 1820s. Ian Brice examines the origins of and debates the secondary school co-education for middle class girls in English Edwardian society. Its ultimate significance, he concludes, was that the co-education movement helped shift the focus of English progressive education, including experimentation, towards the secondary school. The final study is Roger McHarris’ history of the attempting by the Polish community in Australia to foster: and maintain separate ethic or national schools in Australia. This type of study is always welcome as it helps overcome the paucity of historical knowledge on immigrants’ education in Australia. MSE in recent years has encouraged such studies, although the tally board of one study of Italian families, and now two on the Polish community, may seem a little distorted. This is not because of any predilections towards the Polish vodka, popes or political crises, by the editor, for he would probably say and will now probably say (he has said) ‘the doors of MSE are open to all’. MSE 1980 bears witness to such credo, although one is tempted to add, ‘especially if they practise the historian’s craft’.

Andrew Spaull

From the New Issue

Deep Water: The world in the ocean by James Bradley

Birds and Fish: Life on the Hawkesbury by Robert Adamson, edited by Devin Johnston

‘Information and transformation: The continuing expansion of AustLit’ by Maggie Nolan

Appreciation by Liam Pieper

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