[English] Emma Tom skewers Bishop

[Scott Bulfin]

Thought some of you might like this, if you missed it on Wednesday.

Scott



How public education failed me with no mention of Mao

THE WRY SIDE
Emma Tom

October 11, 2006

I'M one of those Australian students who has slipped through the net.  
It's not English, maths or Shakespeare I've missed out on while  
studying at assorted Australian primary schools, high schools and  
universities.

It's the Mao propaganda.

Not once have I had a teacher or lecturer who has advocated the  
autonomy of the Hunan Province, the expunging of non-Marxists from  
the military or the execution of the intelligentsia.

Yet, according to federal Education Minister Julie Bishop,  
perniciously pinko pedagogues have been busily ramming Maoist dogma  
down the unquestioning gullet of every other pupil across the nation.

I feel so left out.

Embarrassingly enough, my public high school education means I can  
still spell diarrhoea sans dictionary, perform long division sans  
calculator and recite - trippingly on the tongue - Shakespeare sans  
script. Sceptics may doubt the usefulness of such skills given the  
wide availability of spellcheckers, calculating devices and people  
who think Hamlet quoters are complete and utter wankers, but on the  
whole I've always felt relatively well-rounded.

Now, however, I realise I'm a freak: possibly the only Australian to  
escape school without having to spend my uniform allowance on a Mao  
cap, Mao suit and Red Army shoulder bag for carrying my textbooks,  
all of which would have been copies of Mao's Little Blue Book.

Or was it puce?

Once again I must confess my shocking ignorance and critical need for  
a crash course in chairmanisms.

University has been no better. I'm about to finish a masters degree  
and it is my grave responsibility to report that Mao has been  
mentioned only twice.

The first time was in a lecture about the implications of the rise of  
China on competing Asia-Pacific and East Asia regional organisations,  
and was part of a brief overview of Chinese economic history.

During this class, there was a lot of chitchat about China's global  
economic ranking based on GDP (gross domestic product) as opposed to  
PPP (purchasing power parity) measures. But I certainly don't  
remember my lecturer - a high-profile member of the Lowy Institute  
for International Policy - ever saying anything along the lines of  
"yay Mao" or "Marxism rocks".

He was far more animated about the fact that, thanks to China's  
international economic integration, communism was increasingly being  
seen as a politically correct fig leaf, even within China itself.

Probably not a concept Mao would have been comfortable with in a  
little book of any hue.

Marxism also made a brief appearance in one of those notorious gender  
studies classes, but even here, an area where radical indoctrination  
is supposed to reign supreme, it was only a brief mention in an  
incredibly dense reading comparing different economic views on the  
idiosyncratic circulation of commodities. Maybe this particular piece  
had a left-wing bias. Maybe it didn't. Unfortunately, it was the  
first industrial-strength academic text I ever encountered at  
university and I had absolutely no freaking idea what its author was  
on about.

Perhaps ignorance was my ideological salvation. All I know is that,  
once again,

the academics who taught this course didn't ever turn up wearing Che  
Guevara singlets or suggest that the great proletarian class  
violently overthrow the foul running dogs of capitalism.

Apart from anything else, these lecturers didn't have time for a  
class struggle. They were too busy wrestling with the massive class  
sizes and massive enrolments of under-Englished foreign students,  
both of which are commonplace now that Australian universities have  
been starved of public funds and are obliged to run themselves as  
enterprises. Not that Bishop or the rest of the Coalition would see  
these developments as the result of enforcing ideology on education.

As Australian educationalists Jane Caro and Lyndsay Connors pointed  
out this week, it's depressingly common for people to brand others'  
opinions as insidious ideologies while insisting their own views are  
values. Actual evidence to back up such positions is usually seen as  
an optional extra.

Well, far be it for a lowly, brainwashed student to suggest that  
Australian politicians lack intellectual rigour, but I reckon a  
little more research is required before the cold warriors of  
education do any more screaming about all these alleged reds under  
the texts.

info at emmatom.com.au







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