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<TITLE>Re: [English] Emma Tom skewers Bishop</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>Read it in the original.<BR>
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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<BR>
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Terry<BR>
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On 13/10/06 8:15 AM, "Scott Bulfin" <scott.bulfin@education.monash.edu.au> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:13.0px'>T</SPAN></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:13.0px'><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial">hought some of you might like this, if you missed it on Wednesday.<BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Arial">Scott<BR>
</FONT><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"> <BR>
</FONT></SPAN><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><FONT SIZE="6"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:32.0px'><B>How public education failed me with no mention of Mao<BR>
</B></SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'><I>THE WRY SIDE<BR>
Emma Tom<BR>
</I>October 11, 2006<BR>
<B>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.<BR>
</B>It's the Mao propaganda.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>I feel so left out.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>Or was it puce?<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>Once again I must confess my shocking ignorance and critical need for a crash course in chairmanisms.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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".<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>Probably not a concept ! Mao would have been comfortable with in a little book of any hue.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>Perhaps ignorance was my ideological salvation. All I know is that, once again,<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>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.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="1"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:16.0px'>info@emmatom.com.au<BR>
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