Copyright (c) 2009 University of Wollongong All rights reserved. http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers Recent documents in Faculty of Arts - Papers en-us Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:03:05 PST 3600 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/212 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/212 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:51:14 PDT One of the main tasks of education is to nurture inquiring minds. Equipping students with a capacity to think about the world is as important as gaining a formal qualification. Indeed, the two should not be separated - what use is a qualification which has not also enabled you to be a thoughtful citizen? A democratic system is dependant upon an educated and informed public. When both education and information are restricted, democracy suffers accordingly. A. Ashbolt http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/211 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/211 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:46:58 PDT As the world witnessed the cold ferocity of terrorism last week - the shattering loss of life, the enormous suffering of the American people - it became clear quickly that madness was to be met by madness. It is perhaps understandable that irrational policy flows from seemingly irrational events. It is not, however, good for world peace or even good for the fight against terrorism. Xenophobia, jingoism and racism are not logical or considered responses to international terrorism. A. Ashbolt http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/210 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/210 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:44:01 PDT While Tony Blair's war on civil liberties has been checked by the British Parliament, Labor in Australia fails to challenge the threat to democracy which the terrorism legislation represents. Instead, Kim Beazley is happy to declare that Labor is with Mr Howard in "the war on terror". That is somewhat remarkable, given that Mr Howard sees the invasion of Iraq as part of "the war on terror". A. Ashbolt http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/209 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/209 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:00:18 PDT Certain mythologies pervade the assault upon public education. One of these is that Labor's education policy at the 2004 election damaged the party electorally. I will explore this next week. First, however, I will address a more recent intervention in the schooling debate which has received much attention. Emeritus Professor Brian Caldwell, publicizing his book published by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), has pointed repeatedly to an AC Nielsen survey conducted for the ACER showing that a significant number of public school parents would send their children to private schools if they could. The survey, from July 2004, revealed that 34% of such parents would choose to send their children to private schools if there were no additional cost, while 54% declined the temptation to move private. Given the funding bias towards private schools now, it is that 54% statistic which is significant but Caldwell and newspaper reporters taking up his concerns chose not to focus on this. Peculiarly, on Radio National's Late Night Live (July 4), Caldwell referred confidently to this particular survey but used a statistic not found in the survey itself. He suggested it indicated that 70% of parents would send their children to private schools if they could afford the fees. This figure was repeated in the Sydney Morning Herald's report (July 5) on his reflections about the parlous conditions at public schools. Even if you were to add, with little legitimacy, the 34% surveyed to the 32.4% who already send their children to private schools, the 70% statistic is inaccurate. It does, however, serve a useful ideological purpose. A. Ashbolt http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/208 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/208 Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:43:33 PDT Milton Friedman introduced the concept of vouchers in education over fifty years ago. Thankfully the world ignored him. Nonetheless, the various victories of neoliberal doctrine from the early 1970s on in the USA, England and Australia placed vouchers on the agenda but not as a central platform. It is one of those policy ideas that is embraced with enthusiasm periodically only to retreat into the recesses of think tanks whose priorities are tax relief for the wealthy and real or imagined wars. When the governments of choice for these tanks are replaced by ones with a thin veneer of progressive ideology (Rudd Labor, perhaps), they tend to search for a revitalising force, a product that will capture the imagination of those who crave authentic neoliberal orthodoxy. They feel, in a sense and justifiably, that their thunder has been stolen by their own progeny who pretend to descend from a different line. Having helped drag brand Labor far into the murky world of market orthodoxy, they seek more and throw out adventurous challenges. Education revolution, Kevin and Julia? We'll give you one. A. Ashbolt http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/207 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/207 Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:52:58 PDT Recent announcements by the NSW government to increase security during the Olympic Games in 2000 have focussed attention on the nature of and reasons for surveillance. The word surveillance has sinister connotations, of a hidden watcher observing a person or group of people without their knowledge. The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary notes that the practice applies especially to a 'suspected person.' G. Mitchell http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/206 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/206 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:05:19 PDT 'Speaking as a tojisha' has become an important strategy in establishing 'correct knowledge' about sexual minority cultures in contemporary Japan. Originally developed in a legal context where it referred to the 'parties' in court proceedings, in the 1970s tojisha was taken up by citizens' groups campaigning for the right of self determination for the 'parties concerned' facing discrimination and has become a central concept for all minority self-advocacy groups. In the 1990s the discourse of tojisha sei (tojisha-ness) was adopted by gay rights groups and by spokespersons for lesbian and transgender communities in a battle to change public perceptions of sexual minorities through insisting on their right to speak about themselves in their own voices.This paper considers two unforeseen outcomes of the primacy of the tojisha in current LGBTQ discourse. Firstly, through insisting on attending to the voice of each individual, it has proven difficult to establish common links between discriminated communities (or within communities) because of widely diverging perspectives. Also, given the broad variety in many individuals' experience of non-normative sexuality, having to identify and speak as a tôjisha has engendered normalizing effects. The current primacy of the tojisha reinforces developmental narratives of sexual-identity formation (only the 'out' homosexual is truly authentic) and in so doing inadvertently silences those unable or unwilling to prioritize the sexual in their presentation of self, or whose modes of self-expression fall outside current orthodoxies that provide the boundaries for sexual-minority identification. M. J. McLelland http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/205 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/205 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:42:23 PDT While thinking about the contemporary state of politics, it is very difficult to shake off a recurring image from the brilliant television series A Vel)' Peculiar Practice.] In that show, a wonderful aging character was writing a book about the parlous state of higher education in Great Britain. 'Death of the University' muttered Jock into a portable tape recorder, between swigs of Scotch, as he wandered around campus despairing at the shattered values and distorted priorities of the new university. Jock spoke for all of us who care about education. I hope to be speaking to all of us who care about politics. And Graham Maddox was, and is, but one colleague and friend with an abiding passion for the values of education and the necessity of a vibrant political life. Yet his passion shone through like few others. A. Ashbolt http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/204 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/204 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:39:22 PDT For some years now, the 1960s have been contested terrain. Many-commentators have rushed to specious judgements about the radical politics of the era, while others have struggled valiantly to keep memories alive. Much of the politics of the contemporary epoch is being played out through the lens of the sixties. This seems like a grand and perhaps foolish claim but it needs to be understood that the neo-liberal and/or neoconservative agenda (and I will include hawkish foreign policy in this) is substantially directed at burying the sixties, the radical sixties. The gains of the various social movements, in particular the anti-war and civil rights movements movements, have been under attack since the mid-1970s. A. Ashbolt http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/203 http://ro.uow.edu.au/artspapers/203 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:26:46 PDT As a political system, democracy depends upon a vibrant public sphere. Democracy in liberal democratic societies is sometimes confused with doctrines upholding individual rights. Thus it is that matters of individual choice come to be perceived as inalienable democratic rights when they are nothing of the sort. Private choices and desires fit neatly into a concept of social good defined essentially by the market. They are things to' be bought and sold, their value adjusted to the vicissitudes of market forces. If we begin to think of education in this way, we have begun also to sacrifice democracy at the altar of private possession, individual greed and/or religious faith. A. Ashbolt