An important document in its own right

I was fascinated by that picture of Milton Public School in 1907 which I added yesterday to my Social History page (see “early last century” tab above). So I have enlarged it a bit.

What do you see? Yes, look at the Aboriginal faces, getting an education at least, if not at this time, and not for another sixty years, counted in the census or given citizenship rights. There is a history here, and today you may trace it for yourself at Budawang Aborigines Milton-Ulladulla. And out of respect I should add: ” In accordance with traditional laws often followed by Indigenous communities in Australia the mentioning of and photographs of deceased people may offend. Please note on this site there is mention of Aboriginal people who are deceased.”

Let future historians decide how well we have been led…

When they do, they could do worse than attend to Bernard Weiner, whose “Twenty Things We Now Know Five Years After 9/11″ was referred to me by The Poet, with the note that he would send “The Boys” to get me if I did not publish this here. No need, Poet. It is indeed a masterly summation, with some strong words thrown in with the undeniable facts.

In sum, we know that permanent-war policy abroad and police-state tactics at home are taking us into a kind of American fascism domestically and an imperial foreign policy overseas. All aspects of the American polity are infected with the militarist Know-Nothingism emanating from the top, with governmental and vigilante-type crackdowns on protesters, dissent, free speech, freedom of assembly happening regularly on both the local and federal levels. More and more, America is resembling Germany in the early 1930s, group pitted against group while the central government amasses more and more power and control of its put-upon citizens, and criticizing The Leader’s policies is denounced as unpatriotic or treasonous.

Interview With Ray McGovern

This, The Poet says, is a must for the blog: “It distils the wisdom of an old hand, brilliantly.” McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 yearsand is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Read it now.

Teacher study challenged

The study I reported yesterday has been challenged. I should have known. It is normal for the current government to have an agenda first, in this case a passion for “performance pay”, and cherry-pick studies to suit the agenda. Some would call that dishonest, but not Machiavelli or any member of the Howard government. But I guess all governments do it.

See in today’s Sydney Morning Herald Teachers motivated by passion, not money.

Teacher literacy falls with salaries: Sydney Morning Herald

According to this report:

EVIDENCE that the academic standards of new teachers are significantly lower than a generation ago will underscore a Howard Government push for the introduction of merit pay.

The Education Minister, Julie Bishop, seized on research released yesterday that showed the average teacher trainee in 1983 was more literate and numerate than 74 per cent of age peers. By 2003, that advantage was down to 61 per cent - and the decline was similar for new teachers.

Low salaries for teachers were the main culprit, the researchers from the Australian National University concluded. But they said merit pay for good teachers would be more cost-effective in tackling the problem than across-the-board pay rises.

I am always suspicious when a politician talks about literacy, as so often what emerges is tendentious nonsense; when was the last literacy survey of parliamentarians done, I wonder? If ever there were declining standards…

However, I do agree that teaching has not attracted as many good aspirants as it should over recent years, Thin Potations (Mr Rabbit), Mikey and Aluminium obviously not included, and this does have to do with money, but also has to do with working conditions, and with the outrageous comments and unrealistic demands many in the media and in parliaments too often make about education and teachers. I can see a place for merit pay, but not as something instead of pay by seniority. First, all teacher pay should be more competitive. Second, teachers who take on extra responsibilities are not adequately rewarded for their efforts at the moment; this must be addressed. Third, there should be financial incentives AND flexible staffing solutions, such as reduced teaching loads and greater quality support, for teachers working in difficult environments.

Julie Bishop, and your state colleagues, let’s get really serious about this!

Someone I must look into later

The Artist commented yesterday on my entry on the Christian Right, alluding to Melbourne Uniting Church minister Dr Francis MacNab as a very different voice to those that entry led to. You may read more of his ideas here.

I remind everyone that the Christian Right, while far noisier and far more attractive to the media for good or ill, is not all there is by any means. Look at just about any site under “Faith and Philosophy” in my links, not all of them Christian either.

The Christian Right’s universe according to Mother Jones

Thanks to The Poet for this.

Click on that image; it isn’t what it seems, and leads to all sorts of interesting information.

Books too

Yes, I have also been reading, thanks to Surry Hills Library.

1) Talking it Over (1991) by Julian Barnes. A postmodern gathering of narrative voices, very cleverly done. Introduced me to the word steatopygous.

2) Blow Fly (2003) by Patricia Cornwell, who is certainly an interesting character. I’m afraid I found this over the top and utterly melodramatic. I’m afraid too that the more a novel salivates over the precise details of technology, weaponry, and brands of coffee (product placement?) the less humane it seems to become; yes, I know it’s par for the genre. Cornwell gets one bit of obsessive detail wrong too, talking at one point of jarrah wood from South Africa. As we know, the word is from an Australian Aboriginal language and the tree from Western Australia.

3) Imagine being gay in Ireland in 1965. This was the lot of John Broderick and of the central character in The Waking of Willie Ryan (1965; republished 2004).

What I’ve been watching

Since I started watching DVDs on this computer, mostly I have been watching things of relevance to my tutoring, a couple of which I have already mentioned: The Truman Show, In Search of Shakespeare, King Lear, Citizen Kane which has excellent additional material, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet with Nicol Williamson, and Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia, Shakespeare in Love, Cosi (a funny review, that), Empire of the Sun, one of my favourites, also with great additional material on the DVD. And the beautiful, inspiring and poignant Billy Elliot, of course, which I mentioned on the weekend.

Naturally I watched Casablanca for my own pleasure. I also saw A Beautiful Mind, which I love. Russell Crowe was very good in that. Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, is stylish and very well performed. Sir John Gielgud’s final movie, I notice, but not Cate Blanchett’s. Speaking of Aussies, I had a look at David Williamson’s Brilliant Lies, perhaps getting a bit dated. Funny though.

Two real treasures have been Quidam from Cirque du Soleil — just amazing — and The Paris Concert for Amnesty International: The Struggle Continues… 1998:

A singularly unique and satisfying evening of live performances by a host of the world’s top musical artists. This is just a great concert - period. And you even get the Dalai Lama for good measure. How can you go wrong? Here’s a hint… you can’t.

Blogging against dementia?

No-one has yet mentioned this in John Baker’s excellent Five Questions series, but one could conclude from Michael Valenzuela’s research that blogging is an excellent prophylactic against the dreaded brain rot, especially for us grumpy old men.

On the other hand, a blog may be used in evidence, your honour…

Michael Mori in Sydney

Just got this email from GetUp Australia and thought I’d pass it on to fellow Sydney-siders.

On his final night in Australia this Friday, GetUp will host an evening with Major Michael Mori in Sydney to discuss David Hicks’ case: what’s been achieved, the next steps and how we can help. It’s the final wrap-up of Major Mori’s official visit, and we’re honoured to invite our Sydney members to take part.

When: Friday August 25, 6:00pm to 7:45pm (get in early to secure seats)
Where: City Recital Hall, Angel Place (near Martin Place, enter from George or Pitt streets)
No booking required: first-in, best-dressed. This event is free and we encourage you to bring friends and colleagues - however seating is limited so please arrive early.

Read Major Mori’s blog entry.

Leading principal gives new reports system an E grade

Judith King, who has crossed my path several times during my teaching career, works in a real high school with all the usual real problems and issues, and the whole range of abilities represented. She is also a damned fine teacher, even if the Herald has to say “educator”. She is quite correctly appaled by the breathtaking naivety of those straiteners (my spelling is correct!) and simplifiers who advocate the “common sense” (read superficial convenience) of the A-E reporting system, so easy to stick into the computer and so meaningless in any true educational discussion. A-E does not, never did, and cannot reflect the achievements of either teachers or students. It is too often a gross oversimplification that may make the possessors of “A”s and their parents and friends feel mightily pleased with themselves, but actually tells you bugger all.

Then there is this fact:

A brush with fame, yum cha, and the interfaith service

Yes, there I was crossing Goulburn Street and who should be standing very tall beside me but David Williamson! Odd, eh, after some recent entries here! Then on to yum cha at the Regal with Simon H, Lord Malcolm and Sirdan.

After that I went to the Interfaith Service at historic Pitt Street Uniting Church, there on the right. So I shook Stephanie Dowrick by the hand at last; I have long admired her books. At the top of the order of service was a quote from Rumi which I have long loved: Out beyond our ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. We were called to worship by traditions of several faiths, including a good clear blast on the shofar or ram’s horn. The music in the service was especially beautiful, featuring Kim Cunio and Heather Lee, one of the 13th century Cantigas de Santa Maria being truly exquisite. The spirit of Gandhi permeated both the form of service and Stephanie Dowrick’s address.

It may be long before the law of love will be recognised in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.

Brendan Nelson and the donkey

Remember when Brendan weighed into the History Wars with his invocation of Simpson and the donkey at Gallipolli? That was a year ago this week, and it is worth checking what I wrote on my Blogspot Floating Life during that week. For example:

But what a lot of insecure twaddle is being let loose by this whole “I’m more Aussie than you, mate” thing at the moment. The louder the twaddler the less handle they have on history and historiography, it seems. Truth is beside the point. It is the Lei Feng factor (see yesterday’s entries) that counts, it appears. I sometimes suspect that the jingoists in our midst really are the descendents of D H Lawrence’s Ben Cooley in Kangaroo.

And I’m a guy who always, even in the most multicultural classroom, taught things like “The Man from Snowy River” and showed Peter Weir and David Williamson’s Gallipoli. But I also showed Breaker Morant and read stories like Lawson’s “The Union Buries Its Dead” and poems like “Faces in the Street”.

It has been an unseemly but not uncommon spectacle too, I feel, to observe Howard being the *consummate politician* (TM) as his government spins and wriggles under the current rise in interest rates, especially over departing Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane’s various parting shots, as here and here. I have reached the point where whenever someone tells me Howard is a *consummate politician* (TM) I can only agree, sigh, and say “Exactly! Such a shame!”

And on that History Summit, see Lateline.

Maggie Thatcher as Goneril…

…a point I proved to my coachee today as we watched that 1982 BBC production of King Lear, staged and dressed like a Rembrandt painting, in Chinatown on my laptop. I was able to bring up on my Oxford Dictionary/Encyclopedia CD-Rom Maggie Thatcher’s voice to prove the first point and Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” to demonstrate the second. “What kind of interpretation has Jonathan Miller been using?” my coachee asked. I wasn’t sure. Historicist, maybe, certainly highlighting the Jacobean in the play, aside from making Goneril sound like Maggie, that is.