{"id":3678,"date":"2012-12-04T15:27:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T04:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=3678"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:25:05","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:25:05","slug":"public-education-its-not-just-about-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2012\/12\/04\/public-education-its-not-just-about-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Education: It’s Not Just About Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mildura<\/a>
Mildura’s Carnegie Library with WWI memorial tower.
Photo by Mattinbgn (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0) or GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>When we talk about public education we immediately think of schools. Increasingly we are recognising that education is a life-long endeavour and with the explosion of the internet learning outside of the classroom and formal education systems is gaining increasing prominence.\u00a0 Last week at the Buildings, Books and Blackboards conference in Melbourne we were encouraged to recognise that \u2018public education\u2019 throughout the last two hundred years has always encompassed more than the activities conducted in a school classroom.<\/p>\n

This conference was about public education in the true sense of the word \u2018public\u2019.\u00a0 Schools and libraries were considered important sites of learning. The libraries of the mechanics institutes played an important part in the education of many people.\u00a0 This conference covered it all; the history of schools, libraries and mechanics institutes.<\/p>\n

A highlight of the conference was the session about the Carnegie Corporation in the Antipodes.\u00a0 Andrew Carnegie founded the corporation in order to \u201cpromote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.\u201d\u00a0 Rockhampton\u2019s Morning Bulletin<\/a><\/i> observed, \u201c[t]he corporation will take from the shoulders of its founder the task of personally attending to his pet hobby of founding libraries here, there, and everywhere.\u201d\u00a0 The Morning Bulletin <\/i>went on to note that the Corporation would also fund \u201ctechnical schools, institutions of higher learning\u201d etc. (Morning Bulletin<\/i>, 23\/12\/1911, p. 6).<\/p>\n

At the conference, Logan Moss<\/a> from the University of Waikato, shared how the Carnegie Corporation helped to establish the Country Library Service.\u00a0 Moss drew our attention to the care the Corporation took to establish strong relationships with key people in various countries.\u00a0 Sir James Allen, the influential member of the upper house and minister of education, was the principal contact for the Carnegie Corporation in New Zealand.\u00a0 The Carnegie Corporation funded the production of the influential Munn-Barr report<\/a> which was a blueprint for the development of library services in New Zealand for the next fifty years.<\/p>\n

I had become aware of the significance of the Carnegie Corporation in the development of education while working on the Teaching Reading in Australia project.\u00a0 I spent some time researching in the library of the Australian Council of Education Research (ACER)<\/a> which was an organisation established in Melbourne in 1930 with funding from the Carnegie Corporation.\u00a0 The retired director of education in Victoria, Frank Tate, was the president of ACER during the 1930s. He helped to secure funding from the Carnegie Corporation to fund the Munn-Pitt report into Australia\u2019s libraries.\u00a0 Yes, this was the same Ralph Munn who wrote co-wrote the report into New Zealand libraries mentioned earlier.\u00a0 Larry Amey describes the Munn-Pitt Report as the \u201cExcalibur in the fight for library reform\u201d and Frank Tate, \u201cits King Arthur\u201d in an interesting article published in the The Australian Library Journal<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

One of the chief researchers who I worked under for the Teaching Reading in Australia project, Bill Green<\/a>, discussed the Carnegie Corporation, Australian education and the development of the English curriculum.\u00a0 Green said we need to rethink what we understand by the term \u201cpublic education\u201d noting that in Australia debate surrounding public education is focussed on schools but we need to think broader than that.<\/p>\n

Green endorsed the following comment made by Frank Tate in 1937:<\/p>\n

Let us recognize that education is a life-long process that does not end with schooling and that one of the chief means of self-education is reading suitable books.\u00a0 I say that one of the greatest assets a boy or girl can take from school is the ability to read in the full sense of the term and the desire to read worthwhile books.<\/p>\n

Frank Tate, 1937<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Green is interested in the privileged place of English in the school curriculum and asks, \u201cwhy English\u201d?\u00a0 Today it is just accepted by most people that English should be the only compulsory subject to year 12 level, so much so that if we think about it at all we probably think that its status is natural.\u00a0 During the 1930s when the Carnegie Corporation started to fund education research in Australia, the White Australia Policy was a firmly entrenched government policy and harmful notions of race, which led to some dark episodes in western history, were commonly held.\u00a0 Green ended his presentation by arguing for the need for more research into how issues of race impacted the development of the English curriculum.<\/p>\n

Julie McLeod<\/a>, of the University of Melbourne, picked up the discussion from Bill Green in her paper on \u2018Progressive education, race and Carnegie in the Pacific\u2019.\u00a0 She examined a number of Carnegie conferences on education in the Pacific. In a conference held in 1937 adolescence was seen as a \u2018blossoming\u2019 of the young person where that person reaches out from the home and explores new possibilities.\u00a0 McLeod contrasted this with discussion about indigenous adolescents who were regarded as people who could no longer change, who became tied to the tradition of their local community.\u00a0 Instead of questions about education for citizenship and worldliness, the question of education for indigenous teenagers was presented as a problem tied to issues of the difficulties of educating them.<\/p>\n

In the final presentation of the Carnegie session, Kate Darian-Smith<\/a> from the University of Melbourne took a different approach to the history of the Carnegie Corporation in Australia.\u00a0 She used a broader conception of public education to include museums and art galleries in her discussion and focussed on learning and \u2018cultural taste\u2019.\u00a0 During the interwar period there was much interest in what was regarded as \u2018good taste\u2019 in culture.\u00a0 I was interested to hear Darian-Smith\u2019s discussion about the role of art galleries and museums in shaping \u2018good taste\u2019 in her discussion of Carnegie Corporation\u2019s funding of museums.<\/p>\n

Darian-Smith warned that we run the risk of over-emphasising the influence of the Carnegie Corporation if we focus our research solely on the work of that organisation.\u00a0 We need to look at the broader context.\u00a0 There were other philanthropic organisations and individuals at the time.\u00a0 Darian-Smith argued that a feature of the Carnegie Organisation was the fact that it did not work with local philanthropic organisations.<\/p>\n

The account I have given thus far is of the activities of powerful white men.\u00a0 Yet women have always had a significant role in public education.\u00a0 In another session David J Jones drew our attention to the large numbers of women working in libraries throughout much of the twentieth century.\u00a0 Despite the numbers of professional librarians who were women, there were significant barriers to them achieving the highest positions in their professions.\u00a0 This was exposed in a controversial survey of librarians in New South Wales.\u00a0 In 1972 Sol Encel, C G Bullard and Michael Cass delivered a survey of the profession in which they highlighted the inequities faced by women.\u00a0 Women were a welcome source of cheap labour but it was only men who could enter the upper echelons.\u00a0 Men were groomed for these positions through personal mentoring by their senior male colleagues.<\/p>\n

Cathy Milward-Bason shared with us the career of librarian Margery C Ramsay.\u00a0 After Ramsay became qualified she worked in the Ballarat library service before moving to Tasmania where she helped to establish a library in every region of Tasmania.\u00a0 She then gained a position at the State Library of Victoria becoming the principal librarian between 1974 and 1981.\u00a0 Those who worked with her described her as \u2018formidable\u2019, possibly a quality that kept her in good stead when confronting barriers concerning her gender.<\/p>\n

Through these presentations and others conference participants were able to explore the history of public education in a more wholistic sense.\u00a0 During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Andrew Carnegie and the Carnegie Corporation reflected the attitudes of many in recognising that learning was a lifetime endeavour and was not simply restricted to that taking place in school buildings.\u00a0 Both men and women were immersed in delivering public education albeit women faced many barriers.\u00a0 Underlying public education were the \u2018problems\u2019 of race.\u00a0\u00a0 We can look forward to some interesting research emerging in the future on race and public education.<\/p>\n

I share these observations of the conference with a caveat that applies to all my posts about conferences.\u00a0 My observations of this conference have been filtered by my personal interests.\u00a0 Another person sitting in the same sessions in all likelihood would give a different perspective. \u00a0I am also unable to comment on the many sessions that I was unable to attend.\u00a0 It is so frustrating when several interesting papers are delivered at the same time in different rooms!<\/p>\n

The Buildings, Books and Blackboard conference was stimulating. Over the coming week I will write about some of the other presentations I heard.<\/p>\n

Further Reading<\/h1>\n

There are some great resources on the web for those interested in exploring the topics touched on in this post.\u00a0 Aside from those already mentioned above, you may be interested in reading the following:<\/p>\n