The paper examines a debate in the history of Australian education between historians G. V. Portus, A. G. Austin and J. B. Hirst, concerning explanations of the centralized organization of Australia's public education systems. It is argued that the historians have defined the problem of centralization in education as part of a wider problem of explaining the interventionist nature of the state in nineteenth century Australia. W. K. Hancock's explanation of the origins of the “interventionist” state is presented to show the limits of the problematic within which Portus, Austin and Hirst are writing. A consensus among the historians is revealed in the construction of historical problems, in methodology and, most particularly, in assumptions about the nature of the nineteenth century Australian state. A critical examination of the organizing presuppositions of the historians' work, that is, of their problematic, questions its adequacy and points to what might be a more adequate problematic predicated on a different concept of the state.
References
1.
PortusG. V. Free, compulsory, and secular. A critical estimate of Australian education. Studies and Reports, No. XI, University of London Institute of Education 1937 (published lectures delivered in 1936–1937 at the University of London).
2.
AustinA. G.Australian Education 1788–1900. Melbourne: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1965.
3.
HirstJ. P.Centralization reconsidered: the South Australian Education Act of 1865. Historical Studies13, 1967–69, 42–59.
4.
HancockW. K.Australia. Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1961. (First published in 1930 by Ernest Benn in London.).
5.
Hancock calls it “le socialisme sans doctrines”, using Métin's description of Australian government policy. See Métin: Socialism without Doctrine. Trans. Ward, R. Chippendale: Alternative Publishing Co-operative Ltd., 1977.
6.
Alternatively, they can be described more precisely as belonging to the school of liberal patriots. See Pascoe, Rob. The Manufacture of Australian History. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1979, ch.2.
7.
RoeMichael. Challenges to Australian identity. Quadrant, April 1978, 22, 4, 35.
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See BourdieuP.Intellectual field and creative project. In YoungM.F.D. (Ed.) Knowledge and Control. London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971, 182.
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JonesStedman, Gareth. History: the poverty of empiricism. BlackburnR. (Ed.) Ideology in Social Science. London: Fontana, 1975, 98–99.
10.
See JonesStedman, Gareth. From Historical Sociology to Theoretical History. British Journal of Sociology, 1976, 27, 295–305.
11.
RoeMichael, op. cit., 34. However, Tim Rowse (Australian Liberalism and National Character. Melbourne: Kibble Books, 1978, 92) argues that the pessimism of the Whig account has been overlooked; W. K. Hancock's history was also a history of the corruption of ideals in practice. Rob Pascoe, op. cit., questions the usefulness of the Whig/anti-Whig distinction in favour of a more detailed classification schema.
12.
RowseT., Australian Liberalism and National Character. The theme of national identity has continued to be a dominant theme even during periods of comparative stability, for example in histories of education written during the nineteen fifties and sixties.
13.
HancockW. K., op. cit., 52.
14.
HancockW. K., op. cit., 53.
15.
HancockW. K., op. cit., 54.
16.
HancockW. K., op. cit., 54.
17.
HancockW. K., op. cit., 28.
18.
HancockW. K., op. cit., 55.
19.
In chapter VII Hancock critically examines this form of state ownership and management of economic resources arguing that it has worked well enough in government departments such as foreign affairs, education and agriculture but criticises it in other areas, particularly the railways. He sees the railways as becoming the prey of selfish individual interests and neither being efficient nor serving the interests of the people as a whole, whereas the pursuit of “individualistic rights”, according to the liberal theory Hancock ascribes to, should serve the general interest. The ideal liberal state for Hancock is an ethical state embodying the collective interest rather than particular individual interests. The liberal democratic ideology of Australians conceives of the state as an instrument to be used for ethical ends to implement the democratic ideals of social justice and equality, but Hancock is suggesting that these ideals are sometimes corrupted in practice. Hence, Rowse's comments on the pessimism in Hancock's whiggism.
20.
HancockW. K., op. cit., 55.
21.
HancockW. K., op. cit., 55.
22.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, loc. cit.
23.
PortusG. V.Americans and Australians. The Australian Quarterly, 14, 2, June 1942, 30–41.
24.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 16–17.
25.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 6.
26.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 6.
27.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 17.
28.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 17.
29.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 6.
30.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 11.
31.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 9.
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PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 21.
33.
PortusG. V.Americans and Australians, op. cit., 35.
34.
PortusG. V., op. cit., 35.
35.
PortusG. V.Free, compulsory and secular, op. cit., 71.
36.
There is also, as in Hancock, a passing reference to the existence of an Australian national character and its anti-intellectualism which Austin attempts to explain the origins of among the squatters, in the neglected education of a generation of their children who came of school age between 1840 and 1850. Austin, A. G., op. cit., 181.
37.
While admitting that in the main the land selection legislation failed to break the squatters' monopoly on the land, nevertheless, Austin argues that as a result of these laws substantial numbers of farmers settled on the land. He quotes as evidence of this population figures from ClarkC. M. H.Select Documents in Australian History, 1851–1900, pp. 664–665. See Austin, A. G., op. cit., 181.
38.
AustinA. G.op. cit., 182.
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See FitzpatrickB., The British Empire in Australia. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1949.
40.
AustinA. G.The British Empire in Australia. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1949, 183.
41.
See AlexanderF.Moving Frontiers. M.U.P., 1947. Alexander accepts that Australia had no frontier distinguishable in the American sense of a progressive steady expansion of concentrated settlement and that this was due to geography and the distribution of natural resources. He argues, however, that Australia did have a frontier in the sense of major movements of people to undeveloped areas and, consequently, frontier traits of individualism and self-reliance may have existed but were overridden by habits of leaning on authority and co-operative action (p.55). He quotes Portus' arguments to explain the disappearance of frontier traits in Australia.
42.
AustinA. G., Moving Frontiers. M.U.P., 1947. Alexander accepts that Australia had no frontier distinguishable in the American sense of a progressive steady expansion of concentrated settlement and that this was due to geography and the distribution of natural resources. He argues, however, that Australia did have a frontier in the sense of major movements of people to undeveloped areas and, consequently, frontier traits of individualism and self-reliance may have existed but were overridden by habits of leaning on authority and co-operative action (p.55). He quotes Portus' arguments to explain the disappearance of frontier traits in Australia, 183.
43.
AustinA. G., Moving Frontiers. M.U.P., 1947. Alexander accepts that Australia had no frontier distinguishable in the American sense of a progressive steady expansion of concentrated settlement and that this was due to geography and the distribution of natural resources. He argues, however, that Australia did have a frontier in the sense of major movements of people to undeveloped areas and, consequently, frontier traits of individualism and self-reliance may have existed but were overridden by habits of leaning on authority and co-operative action (p.55). He quotes Portus' arguments to explain the disappearance of frontier traits in Australia, 112–113.
44.
Hirst does not explicitly mention Hancock in this article but in a later work, Adelaide and the Country 1870–1917, Carlton, Vic.: M.U.P., 1973, he examines in some detail Hancock's explanations for the absence or weakness of local government in Australia.
HirstJ. B., Centralization reconsidered, op. cit, 42–3. See also Glynn, Sean, Urbanisation in Australian History 1788–1900. Melbourne: Nelson, 1975, 5.
The two views of the state referred to are American and English; the Jeffersonian assumption that the best government was the government of a small community and the Millian view that local institutions were a protection against the tyranny of the majority.
50.
HirstJ. B., op. cit., 57.
51.
HirstJ. B., op. cit., 57–58. In Adelaide and the Country, op. cit., he does conduct a more detailed investigation in relation to the question of the development of local government.
52.
HirstJ. B., op. cit., 59.
53.
See OsmondW.The Dilemma of an Australian Sociology. Arena Monograph, 1972. Osmond examines the pervasiveness of environmentalist assumptions in Australian historiography and describes these ahistorical explanations of Australian society as a theory of environmental determinism.
54.
Hancock's explanation is a weak version of environmental determinism, allowing as it does for tradition as an additional causal factor. See also Rob Pascoe, op. cit., ch.2.
55.
AustinA. G., op. cit., 183.
56.
FrenchE. L. (Ed.) Melbourne Studies in Education 1958–1959. Parkville, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1960, Preface.
57.
PartridgeP. H.Society, Schools and Progress in Australia. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1968, 63.
58.
FitzgeraldR. T.MusgraveP. W.PettitD. W.School and neighbourhood: a case study. Australian Education Review, A.C.E.R., 1974, vol. 7, numbers 1 and 2, chapter 1.
59.
For an analysis in the English context of the field of debate about education and its effects through policies on the education system see Finn, Dan, Grant, Neil, Johnson, Richard. Social democracy, education and the crisis. Cultural Studies1977, 10. On Ideology, C.C.C.S. University of Birmingham.
60.
A critical account of Labor's education policies is found in White, Doug. Create your own compliance: the Karmel prospect. Arena, 1973, No. 32–33, 35–48.
61.
After Hirst environmental determinism appears to have lost favour as an explanation for centralization in education. For example, see Grundy, Denis. ‘Secular, Compulsory and Free’. The Education Act of 1872. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1972. Grundy examines the political manoeuvres surrounding the passing of the 1872 Education Act in Victoria. He observes: “Centralization was not an unconscious response to unsettling colonial conditions, but was deliberately planned as an administrative expedient” (p.5). Grundy argues, in opposition to Portus (Free, compulsory and secular, loc. cit., 21) that centralization was a response to “the religious question”, i.e. to the fear of local control leading to the sectarian manipulation of schools.
For a discussion of this see SerleG.The Rush to be Rich. A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1883–1889. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1971. Gollan, R. Radical and Working Class Politics. A Study of Eastern Australia 1850–1910. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1960.
64.
For the beginnings of an analysis of the nineteenth century English state in such terms see Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan, 1978, ch.7.
65.
HirstJ. B., op. cit., 57–58.
66.
See HallS., op. cit.; BurnsW. L.The Age of Equipoise. London: Unwin University Books, 1968; PolanyiK.The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957; MorrisN. State paternalism and laissez-faire in the 1860s. In CosinB. R. (Ed.) Education: Structure and Society. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1972, 281–291; TaylorArthur J.Laissez-faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Macmillan, 1972. Hirst alone of all the historians working within the centralization problematic appears to question the traditional representation of the nineteenth century English state but this does not lead him to redefine the problem of centralization in education.
67.
TaylorArthur J., op. cit., 48.
68.
HallS. is an exception to this. See footnote 71.
69.
See for example GramsciA.The Modern Prince and Other Writings. New York: International Publishers, 1975.
70.
GrayRobert Bourgeois hegemony in Victorian Britain. BloomfieldJ. (Ed.) Class, Hegemony and Party. Laurence and Wishart, 1977.
71.
JohnsonRichardNotes on the schooling of the English working class 1780–1850. Schooling and Capitalism. A Sociological Reader. London: Open University, R.K.P., 1976.
