The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
I'm sure it has been obvious to all of you for some time that the public school system is under attack by the federal government, and starved of funds, because Liberals don't believe there should be a public school system. Having produced John Winston Howard the public school system, it seems, has outlived its usefulness. This is yet another push on ideological and economic grounds. Ideological because this is a government that thinks that nothing in society should be in public hands, every last aspect of our lives and our world should be privatised. These are people who think that the only motive that matters in society is money. That there is no such thing as being motivated to work for the public good, for the benefit of society; only those who work for more and more money, bigger and bigger profits have a real motive. These are the kind of people who believe that government (as was said in America) should be made small enough to drown in a bathtub (and by 'government' the writer meant the public service).
Happily, though, this ideological belief coincides with economic imperatives. This is a government which has set about ensuring that every part of your life, from play school to aged care, in sickness and in health; every part of the environment; every function in society and all infrastructure; should be there simply to make money for giant corporations. Nothing is there for wider benefit, to suit people's needs, or to improve their world. This government saw themselves in 1996 as being handed the keys to a huge continent on which there were many opportunities, not yet realised, for the rich to get richer, and set about unlocking the vault. Public schools and public hospitals are next on the list. Huge profits are already being made from private hospitals and private schools, but there is much more to come. Seventy percent of children still in the public school system? What a waste of potentially massive profits, let's force them out soon.
So all pretty obvious, no controversy there. Everyone knows what's going on, the government barely bothering to even try to disguise its motives and intentions any more. But the process is running side by side with an equally damaging program. You will have seen that the states have caved into continuing pressure and have dumped the teaching of courses in society and environment and have returned to the old geography and history units. Of course John Howard has been attacking history teaching in Australia for some time now. In his view, it seems, the only history which should be taught is the Kings and Queens of England, and the history of the Liberal party of Australia. There must certainly be no teaching of the history of Aboriginal people, for example, or history as seen from the perspective of women, or workers, or migrants, or the environment. And they certainly don't want children seeing the links between politics, and society, and the environment, and history. This is a government that relies on people being kept ignorant of history and context and the links between actions here and effects there. And returning history and geography teaching to lists of kings and prime ministers, and geography to capital cities and main exports, is a major step towards ensuring that the next generation of voters remains ignorant of what is really going on.
John Howard may have no interest in planning our response to climate change, but he has every interest in planning ahead to keep the Liberal Party permanently in power.
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)