This week, my tutorials in one of the courses I teach are on the roles of Parliament, Cabinet and Prime Minister in the Australian political system. Two of the things the students are expected to know by the end of the tutes are that (a) one of the functions of Parliament is to approve supply and (b) the Senate has the power to block bills originating in the House of Representatives.
Yesterday, after satisfying myself that the students in both classes knew both these points, I asked the students if they could name a significant event in Australian history revolving around these aspects of the Constitution. Only one out of 39 students could tell me that this event was the dismissal of the Whitlam government, and even she was unable to be specific about the constitutional issues at stake.
I have not become deeply involved in the debates about history teaching in schools due to lack of first-hand knowledge of what school students are currently taught, and how. However I would infer two things from yesterday’s experience (and similar experiences in the past couple of years):
(a) some pivotal events in Australian political history are clearly not being taught to students in Queensland schools;
(b) a sinister politically correct left-wing agenda is clearly not at work in the teaching of history in Queensland schools, considering what a simple task it would be to plausibly narrate the events of 1974-75 in a way which makes the Coalition parties and other key players (Sir John Kerr, Pat Field, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Tom Lewis) look like cads.
This nonetheless raises the question of how such a politically charged episode can be taught to school students, and who should be in charge of deciding how it is taught given that it is virtually impossible for politicians to be remotely objective about it, even if they wanted to be.
http://www.chaser.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1949&Itemid=26
Paul, I used to tutor introductory level politics subjects in the early 90s, and I can give you a specific date for the onset of this amnesia: 1994.
I worked it out at the time: this was the first bunch of students who had been born after the Whtilam dismissal, and it just wasnt on their radar.
To be fair, it made me realise that I was rather more cogniscent of, and interested in events from 1968 onward – and rather less beforehand. Nonetheless, fairly perturbing.
More eye-opening for me- when I taught introductory politics in Britain in 95. I remember explaining the dismissal and they were just gobsmacked. ” ‘Thats like the Queen dismissing John Major, right?”. Their attitude really changed towards Australia. I could sense they no longer saw us as a nation of lovable, class-free, vaguely anti-authoritarian types – but as a rather immature nation of dupes and idiot surfers, scarcely in charge of its own democratic institutions.
(Oh, except my two Nigerian students. They were all “whats not to get about that?”)
Paul. As one who taught at a uni for 12 years I have to say that your anecdote does not surprise me in the slightest. The modern crop of kids at uni were all born in the mid 80s, and would only have become aware of politics by the mid-late 90s. An event like the Dismissal is like something out of ancient history to these kids. Same with the Vietnam war. World War II is like the Crusades. Something that happened long long ago far far away. It is such a shame that we are raising a gerneration with such a deep and profund level of ignorance about matters historical. And we have to take the long view. There is apparently a story – it may well be apocryphal – that when Mao Tse Tung was asked about the impact of the French Revolution he replied “It’s too early to tell yet”. It is disappointing that this occurred in the context of a course on government, but all too predictable, alas.
Cheers..
We learnt nothing about Aussie political history at high school. I learnt about the dismissal when I was 13 reading an article in Nexus magazine. That’s right. Bloody Nexus magazine.
We learnt a bit about politics in catholic studies… but that was centred on sectarian issues. Apart from that… niente!
In a way… he was exactly right.
Hey Cliff, what was the spin that Nexus put on the dismissal? Did they buy into the whole ‘CIA conspiracy’ theory?
I blame the enduring fashionableness of the word ‘relevant’, popularised over decades in schools, used without a referent, and offered as a reason to dismiss a fact, a theory or an entire body of knowledge out of hand. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard or seen an undergraduate use the words ‘relevant’ and ‘irrelevant’ (usually, when written down, misspelled), I’d never have to work again.
And whenever I did my narna in a tute or seminar and said ‘Look, you can’t just say “It’s not relevant” — not relevant to what?”, the questionee would look at me blankly, think about it for a minute, and then say, ‘Well, to me.’
I’m trying to work out when it was that this solipsism kicked in. When I was an undergraduate I was desperate to broaden my horizons, not to reinforce their narrowness.
All the anecdotes above centre around classes of people, filled with & taught by people who have a bent for studying/current affairs/etc.
The total & complete lack of political awareness among the general young population is widespread.
Quick straw poll of customers, staff & neighbors reveals that nobody under 25 knows which electorate they live in, & very few even have the concept of an electorate, none could name either the state or federal representative, despite both their offices being within one block. About half were able to name the Prime Minister, none could name the state Premier. Many were surprised that Australia had ever been in a war, although some thought we had fought “the japs” in vietnam.
As for the dismissal? The basic workings of the electoral process for forming a government is beyond their comprehension.
Incredibly, about half were gobsmacked to be told that a can of soft drink contains sugar. (adults drinking coke because they are “off” sugar for a while)
Yeah Tim that was the general gist of it.
State seat = Bulimba (Pat Purcell, ALP)
Federal = Griffith (Kevin Rudd, ALP)
Before I moved to Brisbane ->
State = Lismore (Thomas George, Nats)
Federal = Page (Ian Causley, Nats)
But then… I’m a politics student so that isn’t likely to be representative.
Almost right. It was Zhou Enlai!
I’m trying to work out when it was that this solipsism kicked in. When I was an undergraduate I was desperate to broaden my horizons, not to reinforce their narrowness.
Modern education: narrowing our horizons and lowering our standards so as to move to a point of complete unawareness of everything that is anything.
Knowledge is oppression, people.
Ummm … why not assemble a diversity of arguments on the issues, and let the students make their own minds up?
Some pages from the memoirs of relevant players, maybe some news clippings from the day, and some well-written modern articles, from both left and right viewpoints.
Just make sure there is a real attempt at balance, and that it’s not just a list of grievances from the left.
Back in 1968 I was working at Wattle Park Teachers college in Adelaide. They did a test of the new intake of students and were shocked to find many (can’t remember the percentage) thought that Bob Menzies was PM.
Harold Holt had burst upon the scene two years earlier, with photos of him and his nubile neices in bathers on the front page of the local afternoon paper. Then in December 1967 he disappeared into the brine off Portsea with rumours that he had been picked up by a Chinese sub.
After that nothing has surprised me.
Paulus, I like your idea.
I would agree with Paulus… but his gravatar reveals that he is part of the Illuminati and the NWO and is thus a satanist alien-collaborator bent on enslaving humanity. I read about that in Nexus magazine as well
Shorter TimT: Ignorance is strength.
That’s not satanist, Cliff, I believe old Paulus’ gravatar is a detail from a United States banknote. I’ve given my opinion recently here about the relative evil of the United States, and it’s not that great. What’s the banknote motto again, ‘E Pluribus Unum’? There’s So Many Of Us All We Think About Is Ourselves?
By the way, why were you reading Nexus when you were thirteen instead of cheap smuggled pornography, like a good teenager?
I despair of the youth.
Cliff – I gather that a diligent student of Nexus magazine can learn quite a few things, some of which may even be true!
Maybe governments should cancel funding for schools and take out a subscription to Nexus magazine instead, one for every child.
It would be cheaper. Also, instead of letting the children gradually mature into a state of drivelling idiocy, it would instill it into them at a very young age. Win-win!
I know… tongue is firmly in cheek DD
Well first of all… I’m of the generation that grew up not necessarily watching the X-Files (TV was severely restricted when I was a child)… but definitely influenced by its themes of conspiracies, aliens and the supernatural (my grandmother gave me a huge book on the Supernatural by Colin Wilson when I was 11 or 12 which had a profound effect on me). My friend’s parents used to run the Nimbin emporium, which stocked nexus and new dawn magazines… he gave me a few copies and I was hooked. I still pick up a copy every now and then to indulge my nostalgia for a time when I could actually believe in the stuff.
And, regarding porno… I had the internet, silly!
They shoot aimlessly at everything… which means that most of the time they miss… but perhaps they do hit the occasional target at times.
I can’t believe the shallowness of male puberty today. You’re missing out on all of the tension of hiding places for your filth. Where’s the fun in sending it to Trash?
You know, if I had parents (which I don’t, you know, being the Devil, ‘n that) it just wouldn’t have sounded the same if it were
Well my parents would have just laughed, rolled their eyes or kept quiet to avoid embarrassing me.
It’s quite simple.
1. Show them that if the Head of Government has the least suspicion in the Viceroy, a telephone call to the Monarch will replace him/her.
2. Show them that by any legitimate reading of the Constitution, Kerr was well within his rights to do what he wanted to the Head of Government.
3. Show them that by any legitimate reading of the Constitution, a majority in the Lower House has the ability to pass a motion of no confidence in any Ministry that has a Vice Regal Commission. Therefore any attempt by the Head of a minority ministry to call for elections before the elapse of time amounts to a Vice Regal coup.
4. Show them that conventions and gentleman’s agreements have no constitutional standing.
5. Suggest to them that if they want to change any or all of these facts, they are free under our constitution to try.
Indeed. The image combines a reference to money, power, and the occult, which is why I chose it! (Yes, I too confess to have read the odd copy of Nexus in my mis-spent youth.) I originally wanted a gravatar with an image of Great Cthulhu, but I couldn’t find a good one!
At the risk of totally derailing this thread … Cliff, why do so many people use pix of vile mongrels? I’ve never seen a single dog gravatar — there’s no balance! I think I shall hunt for a good pic of a doberman, or maybe of John Walmsley wearing his famous cat hat!
I went to High School in the Eighties and was a wee small thing when the dismissal occurred. (My parents were/are conservatives who suspected the red element of the labor party … though they took us to Bible studies at an infamous christian state labor leaders home, but that’s another story).
The first i heard of the dismissal was at Uni in a class with Paul Renoylds.
I may have missed it the first time, but boy, did we re-live it in full technicolour that semester
oooooooo – synchronistic moment – richard fidler just played a waltz called “well may we say God save the Queen” on local ABC.
What would nexus say about that!
It’s not high school students I’m worried about – they should all be more into sex and drugs and loud music anyway – it’s todays Neo-labor party. The entire party, it seems, needs herding into a giant re-education camp where they get it drummed into their thick skulls that
a) ALP governments were turfed out of office TWICE! ( To lose one may be regarded as a misfortune – two is beginning to seem like carelessness)
b) So far nothing has been done to fix this MASSIVE FREAKIN’ PROBLEM in spite of most Aussies being desirous of an Aussie head-of-state.
‘ We don’ need no steenkin’ governor-generalate!’
c)If you don’t clean up after this elephant in the freakin’ room then people might just start leaving you in the ( nearly) a million for GREENer pastures and less ALP manure. How are people supposed to vote for a party to stick up for them when they won’t even stick up for themselves?
That is the question…the existential question for todays Neo-Labor party.
I studied constitutional law while on exchange in Canada, and they even teach the Whitlam dismissal there because it is considered to be such a strange incident. I would have thought that it would be taught in Australian schools simply because it makes for a really interesting story.
Of course, I was never taught it at my Australian school, but it was run by the French government, and so I was not taught any Australian history at all…
are you saying re: lib/alp : better the devil you know than the same devil with the colour turned down?
Maybe people see cats as more integral to the blogging process, Paulus. After all, who’s more likely to come padding across your keyboard while you’re penning that crucial rebuttal or to curl up on your lap during a late night session? Fido or Fluffy?
Anyway, there had better be a damn good reason for shutting the Woofers out.
I can back up Cliff’s account. I can’t remember where i first heard about the dismissal – but it certainly wasn’t at school (in the late 90′s.)
Paul, I think there are two issues here.
The first is that I wouldn’t expect any first year students (except perhaps mature age students) to know. When I did first year government at UQ in 86, everyone had heard of it – we had a whole tute devoted to it in Paul Reynolds’ Australian Political Institutions course, but as most of the class were 7 years old when it happened, few knew much. Still, for some, and particularly for me (because I had a precocious interest in politics) and for a couple of mature agers who would have been in their 20s in 75, it was a real event or memory.
It’s now 31 years ago.
Let me try to give an analogy. In 1999, I gave a lecture on corruption and crime in the Joh era. Even then, while it had been a big part of my teenage and young adult life, most students only had a vague perception of who Joh was and what life in Queensland had been like. What was lived experience to me was second hand knowledge to them. I probably would not give such a lecture at all today, as my point was to illustrate some broader points on the sociology of police corruption and not to talk about Joh, Terry Lewis, the Bellino brothers, etc. per se – but rather to use them as illustrations. I would simply have to give too much background to achieve my objective.
There is an epistemological issue here about memory and lived experience. The first chapter of Eric Hobsbawm’s History of the 20th Century captures the issues brilliantly.
The point about whether political history should be taught in schools is a different one. But I’m agnostic on whether as university teachers we should expect these events to be known to students if they’re not taught in high school. My other point is that they will never know them in the same sense as those who lived through them know them. This actually raises some important pedagogical issues, I think.
I don’t think that anyone on this thread has been doing it, but I’m very sceptical indeed about the narrative that is often run by conservative participants in the education wars that the youth of today are particularly ignorant of past events. How many first year university students in 1975, for instance, would have known anything about the Labor Split 20 years before, or perhaps more comparably, the bank nationalisation controversy during the war? Not many, I’d bet.
As an aside, B.A. Santamaria’s Point of View was shown right up through the eighties wasn’t it?. Imagine something like that on TV now. I think it even might have been on commercial tv.
While this is true insofar as the “look, touch and feel” of an epoch is concerned, and that would apply to social history, the history of mentality, and political history with relation to the democratic process, among others.
However, with the elapse of time, the increasing frankness of people wishing to remember, and/or contemplating their own mortality, and the release of erstwhile secret and confidential documents, historians can with more certainty distinguish between the actual and ostensible motives of past actors.
A good example of this is the knowledge that we now have of the Australian Government’s decision to send troops to Vietnam.
Concern for the Red Tide of Communist insurgency, and reference to the Domino Theory were suitable ostensible reasons provided by Cabinet Ministers at the time. Now we know that a quite sophisticated strategy of engaging the US in the region as a security “insurance policy” motivated thinking and policy. And when Holt later said he’d “go all the way with LBJ” that indeed was the last thing that he had on his mind.
By reading this history, students can learn how people in the past were tricked. There are several practical lessons that can be learned from such a study.
It was on Channel 9, tanja. But at that stage only because Packer wanted it to be. I think it went when Packer sold 9 before he bought it back again.
“My other point is that they will never know them in the same sense as those who lived through them know them. ”
Exactly right. This is one of the central dilemmas of history and/or historicism. We never really know the past because we didn’t live it. The other fascinating possibility is that the people who lived it don’t really know it either. Think of the different ways that each of us ‘knows’ contemporary events as they unfold around us.
All of this discussion seems to support John Howard’s contention that Australian History ought to be a compulsory subject up until Grade 10. I noted in The Australian the other day that Kevin Donnelly thought that the dismissal ought to be taught as part of that process.
Sounds like something we can all agree on.
Late in the discussion, I know – but Paul’s anecdote strikes a chord.
As an undistinguished junior academic through the 90s, I was more or less continuously appalled at the almost universal ignorance among ‘fresher’ students of most of the salient moments of human history in general, let alone Australian history.
With respect to Graham’s observation above, I agree but would add the caveat that “Australian History” should also be compulsorily located within its broader geopolitical and cultural context.
Whatever the case, it’s all bunk anyway
The other fascinating possibility is that the people who lived it don’t really know it either. Think of the different ways that each of us ‘knows’ contemporary events as they unfold around us.
Not only did I live through the events of the dismisal ,I saw family’s come to blows over it and deep friendships ruined because of its consequences.The dismisal of the Whitlam government was not so much the involvement of the likes of Fraser,Peterson etc, and of course the scum bag Gair who was the agent provocateur in the matter.It was the media.
What is not known is the bias that the Australian media exibited in the coverage of the story. The Fairfax/Packer media empire,was scathing in its attacks on not just Whitlam but every member of the cabinet,from the Juni Morosi affair to Kemlani,this is what finally sunk the Whitlam government.At the time it was regarded as a scandal.
However it is not the first time Fairfax/Packer has used their influence.,to change events of history.In 1967 they hung a petty crook called Ronald Ryan.His crimes are not relevant to the point.Sir Henry Bolte who was Premier of Victoria at the time reasserted his leadership,knowing the public was pro capital punishment.,by hanging Ryan he was a shoe in to get re-elected..At the time the Herald,the Age and Sun were against hanging Ryan,however Frank Packer at the time recalled the next issue of the Bulliten and pulped it because of its cartoon pro Ryan and the editorial.He also intefered and pulled a B.B.C. documentary to be aired by GTV 9 against capital punishment.
During the Viet Nam conflict the XXXXX (it is in Tom Urens bio)) media not only bullshitted the Australian people with the domino theory,in 1968 they depicted an Australian soldier pulling a rickshaw with a member of the Viet Cong sitting in the back with a blonde blue eyed Australain girl.This type of cartoon was par for the course at the time absolute Bollicks.
Hey Mark there is not enough time to re-write and teach the lies in Australias history.
To vary the topic slightly, I would occasionally ask in tutorials at UQ who had gone to public or private schools. Invariably, it was always me, the tutor, and one other loser who’d been to a public school – in a tutorial of 15. (15! – remember those days?)
And that was back in the early 90s. In the Arts faculty.
I guess its no accident that free education accompanied the emergence of the bulk of non-GO8 universities. Id wager it had no impact on Sandstone demography at all.
I was at a Combined Catholic Schools Choral festival tonight and the M.C., referring to the ‘history wars’, annouced to the crowd that the first Music performance in Australia occurred in 1788 on the occassion of such and such.
A few songs later he returned to the microphone and sheepishly announced he stood corrected as he had failed to acknowledge Australia’s first people and their history of ceremony and song for thousands of years.
Lest we forget indeed.
I wonder if the revamped OZ history will mention the notorious, riotous and Godless drunken orgy of booze and public shagging on night one of white settlement?
I guess 9 months of sex-segregation will do that to ya. Birth of a nation!
Well there is always the problem of people saying “things were better in my day”. But it seems to be consistent with what I have heard going on in other areas of education. Eg first year maths lecturers spending half the year teaching concepts which they used to be able to assume were taught adequately in high school.
Lefty E, when we first went to UQ, 85% of Law students came from private schools. And of course a lot of Arts students doing Government and History like us were BA/LlB students. So I’m not surprised.
3 people out of about 150 from my senior year at Kedron High ended up at UQ.
Yes, its important that kids learn to buy their way out of merit-based competition. Its about values and choice.
Well, I went to State High, the only ‘selective’ ( locals) entry public school in the state, and we had maybe 15 of 300 at UQ. There were four of us in law, surrounded by a fetid mass of polo shirt-wearing, canvas shoed tossers.
‘selective’ ( locals), that was.
OK, why doesnt the ‘plus’ sign work on blogs? Who’s got operating manual?
Don’t forget the female version with the polo shirts and deck shoes but with the addition of a bob and a headband, Lefty E.
Let’s see about this = business.
+ comes out as +
= comes out as =
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/latin1.html
(
Aha!
I typed [plus sign]
then [bracket, plus sign]
And only the bracket appeared!
It’s all about the ampersand, Izquierdista.
[ampersand]#43;
Oh dont worry, Liamista, Im cracking this code and linking it to various Vatican conspiracies. Im not falling for that ampersand ruse.
…dont forget the Country Road Tote in fawn, navy or green mark
Another state school UQ undergrad here, though granted the private/public split in provincial towns isn’t the class divide it is in the Capitals, and we had a decent showing of 990′s and batch of UQ entrants from North Rocky High – incl. a recent young alumni of the year.
I would suggest, though, that if you contrasted the bottom 20% of my cohort with the bottom 20% of say Rocky Grammer, the divide would be glaring.
grammar, heh.
Liam, as a curiosity, that comment you did with the plus signs went into the spaminator. I have no idea why.
Again as an aside, in the 1960s we had tutorials of around 25 in English at UQ. Then I went to Adelaide and did some studies there. They considered tutorials with more than 6 an abomination. It was one of the things that made me interested in Australian politics and how the country was run.
tanja – I’ve just been entertaining myself imagining what was going on back stage between those two announcements. Did he do the second one with a fat lip?
I feel the need to out myself. I was a Catholic private school girl who went to UQ. I went to Lourdes Hill. But I never wore deck shoes or a polo shirt or a headband to uni (or anywhere else)…
A couple of my kids have entered high school in the last 3-4 years, and the dismissal is in all of their SOSE textbooks. Pretty soppy coverage, leaning towards the “Gough was robbed” view, but it’s there.
Mark, the DLP came up in a conversation with some (very politically aware, age range 30-50) work colleagues this week, and none of them knew what I was talking about.
Tony, one time I should tell the very weird story of the contending factions in the FCU after Lindsay Tanner had taken over the Victorian Branch for the SL, and allies had done the same in Qld. The John Maynes forces still had the National Secretaryship and the numbers on the national exec so money was poured into establishing a “National FCU office” upstairs in an old building in Annerley. As a young Catholic member of the ALP, I went to a meeting there once where, with a Jesuit priest I swear was maybe about 90, we recited the rosary after he gave us a speech which must not have been that updated since Santamaria days about the evils of communism. We then hit the phones to canvass for the union elections.
History is a funny old thing – the (ex)DLP/NCC forces were totally alive and well in Qld in the late 80s and aligned with the AWU – and particularly ex-CPA elements of the AWU (the so-called “Buranda Soviet” headquartered in Fanny St, Annerley where I also lived…). These odd alignments – all of them in many ways at the end of the salience of the reasons why the groups had existed in the first place – had some meaning then, and some influence, and power.
But I strongly suspect it’s a story that will never be told by history – just like the very real push on to form an alliance between Catholic right wing ALP elements and the left wing of the National party – which was for a while alive at around the same time (Malcolm Fraser was involved in it…). It might be recorded in the archives of News Weekly obliquely, but far more so in the pages of the journal of the IAF (Industrial Action Fund) – which was the faction of the NCC which had rejoined the ALP. But the latter is certainly not archived in university libraries. Because these projects were either at their end, or never got off the ground, they may not be told by Clio. Yet they – too – had a real impact on the political world.
An interesting story Mark. Things were different in Melbourne in the 1990s when Jenny Macklin was contesting the preselection for Jagajaga against the Right’s Philip Bain. The pivotal numbers in this contest were controlled by the NCC/IAF and their allies, and Jenny as a pro-choice left-wing feminist should have been anathema to them. Yet at the end of the day the Groupers swung behind Jenny because it came out that Phil had been a member of the CPA in the 1970s and 1980s, and this past association was held against him despite his subsequent journey to the Right.
(As an aside I knew Phil when I was still living in Melbourne – a very nice man indeed.)