The politics of schooling

Show notesThe story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. The identifying details have been changed to protect privacy, but the situations and the political contexts are real. The real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEThe political project of mass public education- Victoria passed an Education Act in 1872 that made schooling free, compulsory, and secular, the first of the Australian colonies to do so. New South Wales followed with the Public Instruction Act in 1880, and the other colonies legislated comparable systems through the 1870s and 1880s.- Historians of education describe mass public schooling as a deliberate political project whose purposes were contested from the start: the formation of citizens able to take part in public life, the production of a literate and disciplined workforce for an industrialising economy, and the building of a common national language and loyalty.Education for Self-Reliance- Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika, later Tanzania, to independence in 1961 and governed the country until 1985. In March 1967, following the Arusha Declaration, he published a policy paper titled Education for Self-Reliance.- The paper argued that Tanzanians had demanded more schooling for years without asking what its purpose was, and criticised the education inherited from British colonial rule for selecting a few people out of their communities into clerical and administrative work while teaching the majority to undervalue their own villages and labour. Nyerere argued for an education that served the society funding it.The folk high school movement- N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783 to 1872), a Danish pastor, poet, historian, and politician, argued from the 1830s for an education built around what he called life enlightenment rather than examinations and Latin grammar, intended to prepare ordinary rural people to take part in public life.- The first folk high school opened at Rødding in 1844, and the movement spread across Denmark and the wider Nordic region over the following decades. Grundtvig was a member of the assembly that drafted Denmark’s first democratic constitution in 1849.School councils and the resourcing of public schools in Australia- Victorian government school councils are governing bodies constituted under the Education and Training Reform Act 2006 and associated Ministerial Orders. They are made up of elected parent members, school staff, the principal as executive officer, and sometimes co-opted community members, and their functions include approving the school budget and endorsing the strategic plan. Curriculum, staffing, and major funding decisions are determined centrally by the Department of Education and the Minister.- A significant share of many government schools’ discretionary funds is raised locally, through fundraising activities and voluntary parent contributions. Because the capacity of families to contribute varies widely, schools serving wealthier communities can raise substantially more than schools a short distance away.The exclusion of Aboriginal children from public schooling- Although the Australian public system was established as universal, Aboriginal children were widely excluded from it. From 1902, the New South Wales Minister for Public Instruction instructed government schools to remove Aboriginal children whenever a white parent objected to their presence, a practice known as Exclusion on Demand, alongside the earlier “clean, clad and courteous” provisions.- Excluded children were directed to mission schools or to separate Aboriginal schools with a deliberately limited curriculum, or were left without schooling. The capacity of school principals to exclude Aboriginal children was not removed from New South Wales policy until 1972.REFERENCES[1] Education and Training Reform Act 2006 (Vic); on the role and powers of Victorian government school councils, see Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, School Councils in Government Schools (Melbourne: Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, 2018), https://www.audit.vic.gov.au/report/school-councils-government-schools.[2] Education Act 1872 (Vic); on the colonial Education Acts that established free, compulsory, and secular schooling, see Alan Barcan, A History of Australian Education (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980).[3] Andy Green, Education and State Formation: The Rise of Education Systems in England, France and the USA (London: Macmillan, 1990).[4] Julius K. Nyerere, “Education for Self-Reliance” (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1967); reprinted in Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism / Uhuru na Ujamaa: A Selection from Writings and Speeches, 1965-1967 (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968).[5] Mark K. Smith, “Julius Nyerere, Lifelong Learning and Education,” The Encyclopedia of Pedagogy and Informal Education, https://infed.org/mobi/julius-nyerere-lifelong-learning-and-education/.[6] Steven M. Borish, The Land of the Living: The Danish Folk High Schools and Denmark’s Non-Violent Path to Modernization (Nevada City, California: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1991).[7] “N.F.S. Grundtvig,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/N-F-S-Grundtvig.[8] Ministerial Order 1280 (Constitution of Government School Councils) 2020 (Vic); Victorian Department of Education, “School Council: Composition, Eligibility and Office Bearers,” Policy and Advisory Library, https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/school-council-composition-and-office-bearers/policy.[9] Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, translated by Richard Nice (London: Sage, 1977); Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976).[10] Review of Funding for Schooling: Final Report, chaired by David Gonski (Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2011).[11] Jim Fletcher, Documents in the History of Aboriginal Education in New South Wales (Carlton, New South Wales: J. Fletcher, 1989); “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Schooling,” Dictionary of Educational History in Australia and New Zealand, https://dehanz.net.au/entries/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-schooling-1/.[12] National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition, The School Exclusion Project Research Report (2024); on the persistence of the exclusion policy until 1972, see also the historical overview in the Dictionary of Educational History in Australia and New Zealand entry cited above.FURTHER READINGJulius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism / Uhuru na Ujamaa (1968). The collection containing Education for Self-Reliance and Nyerere’s wider writing on the politics of a newly independent society.Steven M. Borish, The Land of the Living: The Danish Folk High Schools and Denmark’s Non-Violent Path to Modernization (1991). A study of the folk high school movement and its place in Danish democratic development.Andy Green, Education and State Formation (1990). On why modern states built mass education systems, and what they wanted those systems to do.Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977). The classic statement of how schooling can reproduce social class rather than dissolve it.John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916). The foundational argument that the purpose of public education is the formation of a democratic public.Alan Barcan, A History of Australian Education (1980). A standard history of how schooling was built across the Australian colonies and states.Nigel Parbury, Survival: A History of Aboriginal Life in New South Wales (1986). A history that includes the exclusion of Aboriginal children from public schooling and the long struggle for access to it.bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994). On education as a practice of freedom and the classroom as a political space.All works, organisations, scholars, legislation, and historical events listed above are real and citable. For any source intended for formal academic or professional writing, direct verification against the original publication or institutional record is recommended.About the hostLiv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic contexts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com