Sue Bull & Mary Merkenich
As nearly 70% of Australian students pack their school bags and return to school, they may feel bemused by not having Prime Minister John Howard's support, nor that of most of his cabinet.
In an interview with the Melbourne Age on January 17, Howard said that many parents were not sending their children to state schools because they do not teach any values to children and are too "politically correct".
His ministers then fell over themselves in attempts to endorse or qualify his comments. Acting education minister Peter McGauran argued that public schools have become "value free or are hostile or apathetic to Australian heritage and values".
His evidence was that one school in Western Australia had cancelled an ANZAC Day celebration and nativity plays had been banned in Victoria and NSW. Health minister Tony Abbott, on the other hand, said that teaching tolerance could mean tolerating the intolerable!
Treasurer Peter Costello, in an attempt to define good values, listed: hard work, academic excellence, respect, achievement and strong academic performance. Values that can be found on every state school's charter!
Almost the entire education sector, even private schools, have slammed Howard for his attack. They questioned not only his definition of values, but the Coalition's massive injection of funds to private schools — the real cause of the drift to private education.
The January 23 Age reported that during the past 20 years, the proportion of Australian school students enrolled in non-government schools has risen from 24% in 1982 to 32% in 2002.
Meanwhile, private school funding has more than doubled since Howard's 1996 election, from $1.9 billion to $4.7 billion this year. Subsidies provided to individual private schools this year range from $1404 per student at Melbourne Grammar to $5614 per student at a tiny independent school in Broadmeadows.
By contrast, government schools will receive $2.4 billion in federal assistance this year — $539 for each primary school student and $803 for each secondary school pupil. Most of their funding comes from state governments, but this has also been seriously cut.
Howard, usually fairly wily, has ended up with egg on his face over this scandal. If he was trying to win favour with swinging voters in more prosperous outer suburbs who aspire to send their kids to private schools, it backfired. Most children are still in the public system, and their parents are more annoyed about resource cuts than values. Dozens of letters sent by angry parents to newspapers around the country reflect this attitude.
Howard might have been trying a spot of union bashing, targeting his comments at teachers. The three states McGauran attacked — Victoria, NSW and WA — are the places most teachers took industrial action last year. But the significant industrial action won teachers more support, not less.
Finally, Howard might have been appealing to bigoted or elitist conservatives — or he might just be one of them.
Dr Ben Reid, a Socialist Alliance member from the University of Newcastle, wrote in a letter to newspapers: "I, for one, would like to agree with John Howard's claims over the supposedly superior focus on 'values' that private school education provides. As a student of the boys-only Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane between 1982 and 1988, I remember vividly what some of these values were.
"These were things like: snobbery and a sense of superiority over the less well off; installation of a 'born-to-rule' attitude; over-the-top individual competitiveness; rampant misogyny; bullying; the condoning and carrying out of homophobic violence; racism; the endurance of near psychotic behaviour by teachers; and the notion that you're not really quite a man unless you play rugby.
"Still, thank heavens for the public subsidies that ensured I received better resources than the students at the state school across Norman Creek. I made in it into university (unlike most of them)."
The Australian Education Union has condemned the charges. Federal secretary Rob Durbridge told the media, "We teach 70% of students and we are the inclusive, open system. What John Howard is saying is that we don't teach his values of competition, and privatisation and exclusion — and we're not going to."
Even the ALP has condemned the comments — despite being the party that first introduced state aid to public schools in the 1970s, and that dramatically increased private school funding in the 1990s.
This debate is not about to disappear. Funding for public education and health will be big issues in this election, because so many of us are suffering from the lack of it. Howard's ill judged comments hit a raw nerve because most people are angry that the concept of free and equal education for all appears to be disappearing.
[Mary Merkenich and Sue Bull are members of the Socialist Alliance and teachers at government secondary schools in Victoria.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.
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