[English] Emma Tom skewers Bishop

[brennanhayes]

Read it in the original.

Think Advocacy group should contact Emma Tom with a view to reprinting it in
Advocacy issue of Idiomas not many of our members read the Oz. I consider it
required reading myself. Get lots of ideas for Higher ed supplement.  Speak
further about this on Tuesday

Terry




On 13/10/06 8:15 AM, "Scott Bulfin" <scott.bulfin at education.monash.edu.au>
wrote:

> 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 ha! d 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. B! ut 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-w! ing 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 for! eign students, both of which are
> commonplace now that Australian unive rsities 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 a! re 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
> 
>  
>  
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
>  http://www.edulists.com.au  <http://www.edulists.com.au>  - FAQ, resources,
> subscribe, unsubscribe
> VCE English Teachers' Mailing List
> 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/english/attachments/20061013/5ec56e99/attachment-0001.html