And traced it back.

Sorta. Foucault’s concerned with that period (ca 1780-1830) where the modern world came into being and attempts to trace this by describing the change in political apparatus, the organization of knowledge, the relationship of the individual to the State, the nature of the subject itself.
.
Foucault’s historiography has a certain utility, he asks us to look at different things for example: the design of schools and prisons and what can be gleaned therein regarding ideas and practices of power. But his history isn’t exactly the peerless. That doesn’t matter except insofar as people seem to forget this. They also seem to forget that there was a world before 1800 and that, tho’ much changed around about then, much did not.
.
I contend that after the ‘discontinuous’ 20th century where all that was has been left in broken bits we need to make again the past seem continuous to reinvent what was once called tradition.
.
To wit:

No Shakespeare where I was schooled

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
.
Oh well.

Yes – one of the funniest pieces of TV footage from those years. Cricket Tragic? nuh: a Cricket Catastrophe

Compare Howard’s notoriously hopeless deliveries in Pakistan.

It’s just Greenfield.

Speaking on behalf of the bourgeois Correct Spelling and Syntax Corps, may I say
i) we have no wish to kiss you anywhere
ii) we will not entertain your political views until you have corrected your many errors of English
iii) English is the language of many notable and glorious dissidents past
iv) Ingsoc has been abolished (Ingsoc Abolition Act, 1985; and regulations pursuant thereto)

God Save the Gillard !!!

“I reckon teaching history to postmoderns means reversing time’s arrow. Start now and go back.”

AKA Genealogy! This is how Foucault did history. He did a ‘history of the present’. He asked the basic question, how the present state of affairs (or particular set of relations) emerge? And traced it back.

But you’re right in that this is not the place to discuss it. I don’t mind writing a brief post about it for LP to further the discussion. If you want Mark or Kim?

ummmm, maybe because the new Govt is more centrist than the old (right wing) Govt.? There can be a change, without a full shift to the ‘true left’, can’t there Sam? A small change, perhaps, but a detectable change nonetheless….

I am not a woman.

(2) is clearly – among other things – a point about moderation. The thread is about a specific topic. While you may well think Lucy & Mickler’s arguments are valid and worth discussing, no one else is under any obligation to respond or to discuss them if they don’t find them valid or worth discussing in this context.

Here I’d refer to the comments policy, which prohibits:

# Excessively frequent comments, where the effect of such comments is to discourage the participation of others or turn a debate around into one about themselves.
# Excessively long comments, which break up the give and take of discourse. Please post such screeds on your own blog and post a summary in comments with a link to your own post
# Imputing ideas or motives to others or stereotyping them because of perceived group membership or ideological affiliation.

We make the assumption that you’ve read this – and that’s an excerpt from what we consider to be unacceptable commenting practice – because the comments box asks people to read and abide by it as a condition of proceeding further. I think you need to consider this exchange in light of those points.

I’m also quite able to see that Kim might find it “rude” to be told that what she and others write here is supposed to be part of some political conspiracy.

The topic of the thread is not LP’s politics, the best way to advance the left’s politics, or Lucky & Mickler’s theses about democracy. Please take note. Should you wish to discuss Lucy & Mickler’s ideas at length, I’d have thought it was an eminently reasonable suggestion that you establish or find a forum where such a discussion would be the topic in question. It seems plain to me that your comments don’t go directly to the topic, but seek to extend it in a direction that turns it into a discussion about LP, your opinions about LP and what LP should and shouldn’t do, and the comments about “conspiracy” clearly impute ideas to others.

It’s also clear to me that this thread has become a discussion purely about your views. Should you wish to host such a discussion, it would seem logical that you do so, but we’re not obliged to, because we don’t encourage either stereotyping of motives/meta discussion about LP or assailing us and our blog on general ideological grounds. For obvious reasons. Among others, it discourages anyone who may wish to comment further on the substantive issues, because we get sidetracked into a discussion of the validity of departing from them. As we are now.

There is a wide range of free hosting services for blogs, and you would be most welcome to link here to any discussion you might wish to facilitate about Lucy & Mickler’s arguments and/or left politics, but not to post long comments about it which infringe our comments policy.

Please also note that the thread author is the arbiter of moderation on the thread, and that we do not enter into discussions regarding moderation.

Thanks for that. I’m also not unsympathetic to aspects of what you have to say, but I must ask you to agree to abide by the conditions for discussion on this site, and I’ve tried to be helpful in explaining them at some length and their rationale.

Briefly, because I’m going to bed, too.

My previous post was not directed at Paul but at you. You said (1) LP is inclusive; and then you said, on more than one occasion (2) if it doesn’t include what you want to hear, go start your own website.

Do you acknowledge that 2 contradicts 1?

When 2 is invoked against 1, who’s being ‘rude’?

I still think the assimilation of “LP” as if it isn’t partly constituted by what you’re saying is wrong, and I’ve also indicated that I don’t wish to engage in lengthy discussions of Lucy & Mickler’s arguments. It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that if you think my politics or those of “LP” are not to your taste, you find somewhere more to your liking, and if your interest is in lengthy discussions of Lucy & Mickler, then… Their particular take on things is not the subject of this thread.

Anyway, that’s enough. I’m going to bed.

It doesn’t seem to me to get us anywhere towards what a “viable left alternative” might be except at the level of theoretical disputation.

At the most basic level, I make no apologies for preferring a Labor to a Liberal government, and in thinking that difference matters – not least in human rights issues for instance – but that I don’t advocate any sort of uncritical support for Labor but rather an intervention on its terrain.

Personally, I think Sam is under a misapprehension that I’m a left Labor supporter. I’m not. Some here are. I’m just as likely (if not a bit more likely) to vote Green rather than Labor. But while I don’t think that the left is co-extensive with party politics, I think that party politics does matter.

You’re “LP” too insofar as you participate here, and that’s the way it should be.

Whatevs, dude. Get a blog if you don’t like this one.

If you’re interested in long discussions of their work, I repeat my suggestion that you start a blog devoted to same.

Please grab a copy of Chris Bonnor & Jane Caro’s book as a useful primer — I reviewed it here:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5504

I think it’s great that Dr. Donnelly keeps posting here and posting his reviews here. He is always assiduous in correcting the public record about himself and leaping to his own defence. As well he might be.

However, the appointment of Professors Macintyre and Freebody, to howls of protest from Dr.Donnelly (“My worst fears have been realised” I believe was his reaction, or words to that effect) rather proves Kim’s argument about the extent of his influence.

Outside of The Australian newspaper, that agenda-setting vehicle that successfully promoted Peter Costello’s bid for the Liberal leadership…oh, wait…he hasn’t the influence to do much damage.

And I say this in full knowledge that the new Leader of the Opposition actually wrote the foreword to Dr.Donnelly’s first tome on education “Why our Schools Are Failing.” If I recall correctly, I believe Malcolm Turnbull wrote in the foreword of the Menzies Research Centre-sponsored book that ‘Dr. Donnelly’s views are his own…’ So I wouldn’t expect you’ll see much happening with the change of Liberal leaders either.

Another thing to bear in mind about Dr. Donnelly is that he is sincere, determined, personally committed and absolutely asking the right questions for the right reasons. But, like many, I think his answers are based on a rose-tinted nostalgic view of some outmoded methods and curricula that failed to meet many students’ needs decades ago (they were excluded from the exams altogether, and so didn’t show up in the results) and would fail them even moreso today.

And, for a swiss-army-knife solution here is a generic reply that can be used wherever Dr. Donnelly’s agitprop shows up:

http://thisteachinglife.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-be-education-expert-and-warrior.html

I guess that’s why nobody much responded. It’s all been said before. There are more productive things to be goin’ on with, matey.