Disadvantage and Education

Glyn Davis, Vice Chancellor, Melbourne University (Australian 22 07 09) write on school performance and the poor. I went to primary school in Cessnock, NSW, with miners' children who did not wear shoes in winter. This was at St Pat's but the public schools were just the same. I do not have any doubt that my observations were correct as in 1945 I won the May Day Essay Prize for for 6 pages titled "A day in the Life Of A Miner". Seven years later at university I met one girl who had been in my enormous class and she was not a student. Many years later I became national President of the Australian Parents Council in the magic years when the oyster was opened for what was then called "State Aid". Rule 1 was that all the clergy should shut up and that the matter was to be resolved by the citizens as a matter of fairness in the ordinary course of life not, by any means,disincluding the local hotel. Davis quotes Jack Keating calling for church based schools tobe incorporated into a national regulatory agency for all schools. This formulation smacks of ill considered social engineering with all the prospects of the application of the iron law of unintended consequences. Since the 1930's at least the Teachers Unions have been under the control of various assorted Marxists (originally Moscow aligned Stalinists). The "common front" tactic and entry-ism are still effective. All still very Cominform. However the unrestrained luxury of the theatres, playing fields and swimming pools and the bidding for the best class of labour attendant upon the privileged end of the education market is now disgusting. The test of education is the value added to the whole human being important as brain surgeons, philosophers and merchant bankers are. The value added someone raised from the "pick and shovel" to a trade is immense and of immense value to society. If it were possible everyone should be raised from that kind of hard labour and it is not an attack upon the poor to speak the truth. Australia is much more on the way to genuine equality than most countries. Equality consists not in equality of numbers but in due proportion or equity. It is the right of the plumber, hairdresser or public servant to have the services of the best brain surgeon when he or she needs one. And that is their view of equality. And then there is the appalling mess and waste of billions leading to the degradation of the "original inhabitants" by imposition of a crassly stupid system which has all the hallmarks of that bad faith of which the ideologues seem to be the leading exponents. What is needed is not a "national regulatory agency" but a national enabling agency which can also put a brake on those who have been just a bit too enabled. So basically I agree with Keating and Davis.