Australian education as it was

When a newspaper columnist once suggested a contest for the best book ever written, excluding the Bible and Shakespeare's works, I was tempted to nominate the fifth book of The Victorian Readers series. This, in my distant day, was the main teaching aid (it would now be called a resource) in Year 5, other than talk, chalk and the blackboard.

It is hard to think of a better book for teaching nine and 10-year-olds about their country. The class particularly loved Henry Lawson's ballads The Fire at Ross's Farm and The Ballad of the Drover, and his short story The Drover's Wife. There was also John Shaw Neilson's poem Old Granny Sullivan, pieces about the explorer Matthew Flinders, an Adventure with the Aborigines and a poem about the pioneers.

The sixth book had the even more memorable Banjo Paterson's Clancy of the Overflow and Dorothea Mackellar's My Country ("I love a sunburnt country...").

Nor was it all parochial. The fifth book had approximately equal Australian and overseas content and included pieces on Giotto the Italian shepherd boy, Switzerland's William Tell and the apple, Robert Bruce, and the story of King Kaid of India and the spider. While World War II raged far away, about 40 pupils (a few years later it would be more like 50) would read the livelier items rhythmically as a class, sing-song like the multiplication tables of the previous lesson: "Across the stony ridges, across the rolling plain, young Harry Dale the drover. . . "

But each child also had to read aloud before the class, one by one, and few would not do their best and be found out as a weak reader, which would involve being kept in after school for further teaching. (An even worse fate, and thus spur to effort, was to be kept back to repeat a year; but it was effective remedial education if it happened.)

The teacher, Mr Dunell, would walk up and down the aisles of twin-seater desks while children read and rap on the knuckles with his wooden ruler anybody who talked, giggled or dozed off. His favourite poet - who, I was surprised on checking to find was in the sixth, not the fifth book - was William Wordsworth. He introduced us to Wordsworth's Daffodils, which we had again the following year.

The books and curriculum varied from state to state, but the spirit didn't vary much. These and similar verses and short articles were primary school favourites for generations, until the curriculum purges of the reforming 1970s led to their ouster for various reasons, including a move against rote learning and the suspicion that they were remnants of imperial history.

However, when I read now of the debates over the place of history, especially Australian history, in the secondary school curriculum, I wonder if many educators have forgotten, or not known, how much Australian and general history was once packed into the humble primary school. It was not so much taught as infused in the classroom day. The readers and also the monthly School Paper merged reading, literature, history and geography. The black-and-white sketches brought distant times and lands to life and were themselves an introduction to art. Lawson, Paterson and other ballads introduced children to the story of the grazing industries, the battle of squatter and selector, bushfires and inland geography.

Billy Bear was a memorable cartoon figure in my School Paper, a koala-like chap who toured the sources of our food and household goods: Goulburn Valley for fruit, Gippsland for milk, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) for tea, Java (Indonesia) and Malaya (Malaysia) for rubber.

History lessons proper devoted much time to the explorers. The crossing of the Blue Mountains built on Captain Cook and the First Fleet. Flinders taught us as much geography as history. The journeys of Edward John Eyre, Ludwig Leichhardt, Thomas Mitchell and Charles Sturt taught us more inland geography and a feeling for the early 19th century, with white adventurers moving into the vast plains and deserts sparsely inhabited by Aboriginal tribes.

The explorers were once heroes. When I moved on to high school, the sports houses were named for them. There is many a Flinders, Sturt or Mitchell street still and three Leichhardt postcodes.

The fairly common belief that imperial history is discreditable and must only be studied harshly, if at all, should be re-examined. In practice, avoiding it means little history is taught at all, or becomes the "fragmented stew" that John Howard complained about. For better or worse, empires were the main way of ruling the world between ancient Rome, if not earlier, and World War I. The British Empire was the biggest and, arguably, the best.

Those who feel that imperial history in Australia insults Aborigines have a point. It needs sensitive, but not evasive, treatment. To ignore pioneering history or to present it only as suffering victims of invasion is to avoid explaining how the society we live in came to be. The Aboriginal reaction to white occupation, where recorded, shows rapid and shrewd adaptation, but with lots of problems.

Though much of what has been written is contested, balanced secondary school lessons should be possible, but it seems too complicated for younger children. On looking back through all eight of the Victorian Reader books, I thought the coverage of Aborigines was not too bad: perhaps seven out of 10 marks. There could have been more, but none of the articles was demeaning or patronising, unless it is perceived as politically incorrect to depict Aborigines other than as guerilla fighters or social workers.

Schoolbooks initiated 90 years ago are unlikely to appeal today, and no doubt were losing effectiveness after 50 years of service. And of course most teachers work hard under difficulties. Nevertheless, though secondary school grabs the headlines, teachers say part of the difficulty is that primary schools today turn out too many pupils who do not know enough or read or spell well enough. Formation in reading, arithmetic, grammar, spelling, poetry, history, geography and nature study should not be too much to ask, especially as it once could be done for a fraction of the present cost and fuss.

The above article by Robert Murray appeared in "The Australian" (Review section) on November 24, 2007





Still alive after 3 heart attacks -- but no thanks to a negligent public health system

Townsville triple-bypass heart patient Syd Dart is considering legal action against the Townsville Hospital and Queensland Health. Mr Dart suffered three heart attacks this month waiting for his open-heart surgery to be rescheduled in Brisbane. His surgery had to be shifted south after Townsville Hospital management took the extraordinary step of closing down its cardio-thoracic unit on November 9.

"The management has a lot to be accountable for," Mr Dart said. "They are going to end up with blood on their hands." Mr Dart said once he had recovered from his surgery and returned to Townsville he would begin exploring the legal avenues open to him. "The duty of care has been broken," he said. "I fully intend to research what I can do about it and what avenues can be taken legally."

Mr Dart bravely spoke to the Townsville Bulletin earlier this month about his plight and was also interviewed for ABC Television's Wednesday edition of The 7.30 Report. "Most people are afraid to speak out," he said. "But somebody has got to speak out and I had already decided to do something." During the television interview Mr Dart called on the hospital's executive director of medical services Dr Andrew Johnson to resign. He was standing by that statement yesterday when he spoke to the Townsville Bulletin. "Instead of blaming the cardio-thoracic surgeons for the entire fiasco, you've got to include the director of medical services. The only honourable thing for Dr Johnson to do is to suspend himself from duty, step aside, resign," Mr Dart said on television.

A Townsville Hospital spokesman said Dr Johnson would not comment on Mr Dart's call for his resignation while investigations were ongoing. The hospital management said on November 9 it had no alternative but to shut the unit down after relations between the unit's staff deteriorated so much that patients' safety was at risk.

Mr Dart had a heart attack in early November before he was admitted to Townsville Hospital. "I was meant to be operated on the first or second of November," he said. "I had two more heart episodes while I was waiting in Townsville. "After the second one I was medivaced out and taken straight into pre-op." Mr Dart was flown by the Royal Flying Doctor Service on November 20 and taken to the Princess Alexandra Hospital where he had another heart attack.

On the morning of November 21 Mr Dart finally had his triple-bypass surgery. He was discharged from hospital on November 26 and is now recovering in a nearby facility in the care of his wife until doctors clear him to fly home. "I am one of the lucky ones who got out," Mr Dart said. "If I had gone home, as they had wanted me to at Townsville Hospital, I could be dead. "The community has been put at dire risk, it's not right. "Queensland Health management needs to step in to do something."

Mr Dart praised the care at the Princess Alexandra Hospital. "It was a quantum difference between the administration at Townsville and the Princess Alexandra. When they said they would do something they did it."

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Attacks on Jews reach a record high

It's all those German immigrants, of course

ATTACKS on the Jewish community are at a high, following 638 reports covering assault, vandalism, intimidation and harassment in the year to the end of September. This is twice the previous annual average and 8 per cent higher than the previous record year, 2002.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry meeting in Melbourne this week heard that the attacks mainly occurred in Sydney and Melbourne, the home of the country's largest Jewish communities. "In other cities, you are not going to have large groups of people walking to and from synagogues on the weekend," said former council member Jeremy Jones, who compiled the annual audit. It was not clear what caused the jump in reporting, he said.

Mr Jones has been monitoring anti-Semitic actions and formally reporting them to the council since 1989. In one case this year in Melbourne, an orthodox Jewish man was verbally abused and punched in the face while walking to his synagogue. In another, a Jewish school student was physically assaulted on a public bus in Sydney. Graffiti in inner Melbourne included "F..k Jews", while "Die Juden" and "We hate Jews" were discovered at a Sydney primary school.

Although the rate of abusive phone calls, email and mail was relatively low, there was a disturbing trend towards the use of new communications platforms. "Online communities, Facebook and Youtube in particular, have been the venues of crude and intense anti-Jewish prejudice being expressed openly and unashamedly," Mr Jones said. There was no reason to believe Australians in general thought of Jewish people negatively, Mr Jones said.

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Boy died day after child welfare officers came to call

These bureaucratic a**holes don't give a sh*t about the job they are supposed to do

The day before five-month-old Mundine Orcher died, officers from the Department of Community Services went to the home of his carers and delivered a fridge and a washing machine, but did not look at the boy. The Aboriginal boy died the next day, after enduring attacks over the previous four weeks. Yesterday a coroner found one or both of his carers were responsible for his death, while lying to cover up for the actions of the offender. But, for lack of evidence, neither is likely to be charged.

Had DOCS checked their background it would have found the foster father, Eric Orcher, a cousin of Mundine's father, was wanted by police, had "an extensive history of violence including domestic violence", and had served time in jail. But no assessment was undertaken and this "gross breach of departmental procedure" remained unexplained, the Deputy State Coroner, Paul MacMahon, found yesterday.

The findings place further heat on DOCS, reeling after weeks of damaging revelations, including its failings in the case of seven-year-old Shellay Ward, who allegedly died of starvation, and baby Dean Shillingsworth, found dead in a suitcase. This week an Auditor-General's report found DOCS spending per child at risk has almost halved in the past five years.

Mundine's injuries included a skull fracture caused by direct blows, numerous rib fractures due to squeezing while shaking him, as well as bruising, hemorrhages and pneumonia. A pediatrician, Geoffrey Hardacre, found the boy's injuries had occurred at different times. "It wasn't a single loss of temper attack," he told the inquest. "It was a systematic attack. These were very extensive fractures. This is more fractures than I've ever seen in a baby."

Mundine's mother could not look after him for a few months and wanted him cared for by her father or older sister. She objected to DOCS placing Mundine with Mr Orcher and his partner, Elizabeth Waites, her half sister. DOCS conducted checks on Mundine's grandfather, but not the carers it eventually chose.

On November 1, 2003, two weeks after he entered the care of Mr Orcher and Ms Waites, Mundine was admitted to hospital with severe dehydration. DOCS officers were on notice about his health but did not act to ensure he was receiving adequate care, Mr MacMahon found. When officers contacted the carers, four weeks later, this was apparently only to discuss the checks done on Mundine's grandfather and to deliver the whitegoods. "No effort was made to observe Mundine," he said. Even though the last assaults on Mundine only occurred that evening or the following morning, "an astute observer might have seen something that would have led to his removal on the day prior to his death, and such action might have prevented his death", Mr MacMahon found.

"The shortcomings . are primarily a result of a system failure," he said. DOCS had reviewed its actions in this case and Mr MacMahon was satisfied with the department's response. The general attitude in the Brewarrina community appeared to be "what they don't know won't . disturb them", he said. Mr Orcher and Ms Waites told police Mundine was hurt when his cot collapsed and might have been hurt by their 12-month-old son, who was jealous.

While Mr MacMahon was satisfied one or both of them were involved in the death, he said there was not enough evidence to establish beyond reasonable doubt an offence had been committed by a known person, and therefore did not recommend that charges be laid.

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