Killarney: don't try to kid me or yourself that you are the Happy Little Vegemite you pathetically claim to be.

"Et tu Brute"

Killarney: Playing the 'you're such an unhappy person' card is cheap, spiteful, lazy and childish. And people who act in cheap, spiteful, lazy and childish ways are seldom motivated by a happy disposition.

I tried to be grumpy once & people laughed at me. No. I'm a happy, very relaxed person, always have been. It's just my nature. As I said, one of my greatest joys in life is taking the pi$$ out of Grumpy Bums. I makes me happy.

You are right on one point. History is written by the Victor. A point I made previously, about going to places & hearing about the real story about what happened there. &, What we learnt in school was all wrong.

Killarney: but learn next to nothing about the WWI peace movement and opposition to the war.

Children are given role models to aspire to, not learn about cowards.

Killarney: History is both a tool for enlightenment and for ignorance. It all depends on who controls the narrative.

In the 70/80's the school curriculum was all about the Left & Peace Movement. (Hippies) If you went to Uni during those times & you weren't firmly in the Left Camp you failed you Courses. That's all History.

Killarney: deeply unhappy people for holding certain political views.

I really don't care what you Political views are, although they are obvious. You keep making Political points & turning the conversation into a political slanging match.

Now back to the Mondo Dolls. It took me a couple of days, then I realized where I'd seen those dolls before. Does anyone remember the "Coles Funny Picture Book" series of Books by E. W. Cole. Killarney you would love them, they're all about the Working Class.

Hi Killarney,

But schooling is not the only way we learn. I take it for granted that people can read outside of school, and can do so for life. No, we may not learn much history at school - it's not even intended that we should, there's so much history after all - but in a person's lifetime, it's not very significant, except that, with a decent teacher, we may be pointed in useful directions, the rest is up to us. In short, schooling is not our only education, or at least it shouldn't be.

Schooling is not only, or even primarily, concerned with information, it is a sifting mechanism, more closed in earlier days than now, and more so in Britain than in, say, here or in the USA. Of course, elites try to limit mass social mobility, who gets through to join them, and succeed them in their control of society. The late Ralph Turner wrote a brilliant, and neglected, article in 1960 about what he called 'Sponsored and Contest Mobility':

http://www.professorreed.com/Turner_-_Sponsored_vs_Contest_Mobility.pdf

He compared ideal British and American modes of educational mobility:

* sponsored systems: in Britain, selection is (was) made very early, at the 11+ exams, about who was to be pushed forward and who was to be left behind; those lucky few would be mentored and monitored and coached, sent to 'better' secondary schools, guided into the right university course and on to the right sort of employment.

So, in Britain, there was a three-tiered secondary system - secondary moderns (like out old technical schools, for the working class kids), comprehensives (for upper working- and middle-class kids) and 'public'/private/grammar schools for the elite kids. That model has been weakened, of course, in the last fifty years; and

* contest systems

[continued]

* contest systems, (again just an ideal model): each year of schooling was a 'contest', with annual exams; success meant you went into the next year; nobody particularly 'coached' you, you were more or less on your own, the contest was open and success was still possible, right through to university and/or employment.

So, in one system, the elite carefully selected early on, and made sure that educational advancement was a closed system, at the end of which they were confident that they had groomed the next generation to carry on their elitist principles in controlling society.

In the contest model, more dog-eat-dog certainly but more 'equal', success was more open to anyone who put the effort in, and how well you did eventually determined your place in the elite.

Of course, in the meantime, in both ideal types of schooling, you learnt the basics, including (in the history syllabus) all that stuff about kings and dates and explorers and spearings, etc. But it was hardly put across as the be-all and end-all.

In Australia, back in the fifties, we seemed to have a mixture of 'sponsored' and 'contest' mobility systems: As a feral Bankstown kid, I started off in 3B, barely able to speak (seriously), but along came that Encyclopedia salesman (see above), and I was able to get into 4A, 5A and 6A, then into 1A in high school, and so on. In first year, at my high school, I think it went down to 1R; in second year, down to 2G; in 3rd year, only down to 3E, and in 4th and 5th years, 4B and 5B. Presumably, all those kids from 1H down to 1R left at the end of first year, all the kids from 2F and 2G, likewise in second year.

[TBC]

[continued]

So there was sifting going on, but not as blatantly as in Britain. Getting through was a contest, and it was up to each of us to strive, nobody holding our hands. Of course, there was probably much more pressure on teachers to teach well. I remember some wonderful teachers, but none of them acted as 'sponsors' or 'coaches' as in a sponsored system. They simply taught swell, and it was up to us to learn or bugger off. And the best lesson they all taught was to keep learning.

What is striking about these sponsored-contest models (and they are MODELs, Killarney, not exact reality), is how applicable the sponsored form has been in relation to a carefully-selected few Aboriginal students and academics: some seem to have been coached from secondary school, right through their university days, onto post-graduate study, back into academe and quickly into high positions. Many notoriously have senior white academics at their elbows, who are suspected of writing their papers, theses etc. It is notable that, if or when they fall out (or if the white academic retires), the output of that Indigenous academic seems to completely dry up. But it's not all puppet and puppet-master:

Lesson 1: never fall out with your patron, your minder, unless you can find a better one.

Lesson 2: if your patron looks like he or she is past it, get another one.

[TBC]

[continued]

Sorry, Killarney, this has been a mixed bag: yes, schooling can - for indifferent students - indoctrinate, if it does anything at all, but the bottom line is that we each of us have to strive on our own, to develop our own individual educational base, if possible to maintain some sort of personal integrity, and to learn constantly throughout our lives.

And it's strange how trying to understand history becomes more important as one gets older. If I had more time, I would love to immerse myself in the economic and social history of that period from the Roman Empire through to the late Middle Ages, 300-1500; and especially the history of trade between South-East Asia, the Mediterranean and China in those years. I want to KNOW how the world got this way :)

Cheers,

Joe

jayb

In response to my comment about Australian schoolchildren learning next to nothing about the WWI peace movement, you write:

‘Children are given role models to aspire to, not learn about cowards.’

My point exactly – only in reverse. How many Australians know about the War Precautions Act of 1915? Under this act, all anti-war literature (including songs like ‘I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier’), meetings and rallies were criminalised, and hundreds of anti-war/anti-conscription activists were imprisoned, tortured, black-listed from employment and (if born overseas) deported. Yet, they fought on and succeeded in defeating two conscription referendums, an almost forgotten moral victory that saved tens of thousands of young Australian men from being forcibly sent to the killing fields of Europe.

You call these people cowards. I call them heroes.

Because I’ve made a point of learning about the history of anti-war activism, I have no illusions about the glorious warrior. Because I’ve also made a point of learning about the history of gender politics, I feel very sorry for men who have been brutally brainwashed over the centuries to equate violence and war with masculine pride.

‘You keep making Political points & turning the conversation into a political slanging match.’

Well …seeing this is a history thread, please check back over the history of this exchange. The slanging match – i.e. when things got nasty and personal – was started by you. In other words … it’s all YOUR fault, Mr Happy.

So excuse me … I’m off to spend the day doing happy things and thinking happy thoughts.