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Sir Walter Murdoch Memorial Lecture (1977) Education for the Improvement in Human Welfare Lecture Delivered By: the Hon

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Sir Walter Murdoch Memorial Lecture (1977) Education for the Improvement in Human Welfare Lecture Delivered By: the Hon Sir Walter Murdoch Memorial Lecture (1977) Education for the Improvement in Human Welfare Lecture delivered by: The Hon. John Tonkin The presentation of a Walter Murdoch Lecture is an honour and privilege which I never at any time considered would come to me and I am very grateful for the opportunity. I first met Walter Murdoch at North Fremantle in 1936 at the opening of a kindergarten and we had a friendly discussion about his having acted as chairman of a meeting in the Perth Town Hall when a Mr Butler held forth about the wonders of a financial system which was being advocated in Canada by Major Douglas. When I posed the question ‘how could it be possible to pay a social dividend without first of all having social property?’, Walter Murdoch made it clear to me that he was really championing independence of thought and freedom of expression. Subsequently in 1945 when I became a member of the Senate of the University of Western Australia under Walter Murdoch as Chancellor, I soon found how strongly he stood for independence of thought and freedom of expression and this remained one of his outstanding characteristics until his death. The Inaugural Murdoch Lecture was delivered by J.A La Nauze who was a Rhodes Scholar in Western Australia in 1932 and in 1936. He was one of the contributors to the second issue of the 'Australian Rhodes Review' in which appeared an article under the caption 'What are our schools aiming at?'. That question has been asked again and again and to this day people are still looking for the answer. Over two thousand years ago Aristotle said ‘Nobody knows whether the young should be trained in such studies as are merely useful as a means of livelihood or in such as tend to the promotion of virtue’. In the end he laid his stress on education for leisure - one of the greatest ingredients of happiness - and in this he thought music should play a chief part. In August 1968 the Australian College of Education (N.S.W.) had before it a report from a committee specially set up to consider the challenge of technology and automation in Education. The first recommendation in the report was that 'The quantity of general education that Australians should expect to receive should rise. Every Australian student should be 1 expected to complete twelve years of primary and secondary education beyond age six and should be encouraged to continue at an Educational institution for fourteen years.' Ten years ago speaking at the Australian UNESCO Seminar, Dr Joyce F. Wylie said 'It is no longer feasible to assume that what has been learned by the current adult generation is substantially relevant to the coming generation'. Last July the Chairman of the Australian Schools Commission, Dr K. McKinnon, said in Perth 'Because the more recent emphasis had been to thrust more courses on students during their training, teachers emerged as unqualified to teach reading, writing and arithmetic. But the world wide movement to return to the basics, coupled with the need to ensure that everyone left school with basic skills in literacy and arithmetic, meant that there was a need to rethink teacher training.' On the 14th and 15th of July this year more than one hundred principals of Western Australian primary schools held an historic meeting with the blessing of the Education Department. They saw it as an important step in establishing themselves as of equal importance in the education system with their 'big brothers' running secondary schools, and they discussed community involvement in schools, autonomy in schools and standards in schools. Standards have been the cause of intense debate generally over a long period. Many parents are convinced that literacy and numeracy are declining, although most teachers hold a contrary opinion which, however, appears to conflict with that held by the Chairman of the Australian Schools Commission quoted earlier. Concern about education is by no means confined to the primary schools. To use the words of Stephen Murray-Smith, Nuffield Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne from 1961- 65, 'Higher education in Australia is in an organisational ferment and it is only now starting to undergo a revolution which suggests that, for the first time, some attempts are perhaps being made to think out where we are going'. L.F. Neal, a man of considerable experience in education in England and Australia and who has been Professor of Education at the University of Adelaide and was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Chairman of the Public Examinations Board, is also of the opinion that secondary schools are confronted with a revolution. In his opinion the schools have an entirely new task - that of providing a suitable secondary education for everybody regardless of whether they will have any form of further education. 2 Our universities also have been the subject of criticism. A state Minister for Education recently expressed the view that they ‘appeared to be becoming islands of academic privilege and should not be billets for intelligent drop-outs who wanted to remain there’. It has also been said of them that 'It is undoubtedly true that on balance they have not shown a remarkable capacity for independent growth and have not been especially inventive or enterprising in developing their own intellectual interests and in exploring their own contributions to the life of Australian society'. Is it true that it is largely because many academics are still unsure of the relationship between the university and the community that they are wary of proposals that the universities should respond without cavil to the claims made on them from without? Whatever the reasons are this much is certain, considerable disquiet exists over the turmoil which is now prevalent in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Unemployment has reached a very high level and continues to rise, there is an alarming increase in violent crime, particularly in offences against persons such as rape and robbery. Vandalism is widespread and is increasing and the drug traffic threatens to reach terrible proportions. It is most disturbing that there is a sharp increase in the number of young persons involved. Although we must accept that in the natural processes of social evolution changes must take place, are we quickly enough changing our ideas about education and life and shaping education for long term social purposes? Before attempting to set out a plan to endeavour to remedy the existing situation should we not endeavour to make up our minds about fundamentals which seem to have become lost? Basic standards of behaviour are being departed from. Truth does not seem to matter very much now. Obedience to authority is irksome and to be avoided whenever possible. A danger facing us today is that Australia will cease to be a real democracy governed by the majority. There is a growing tendency to enforce claims not by proof of their justice but by violence or by threat of violence or injury. Any group or any class seems to feel that it may properly, I had almost said legally, extort its desires from the general public if only it has a weapon sufficiently powerful. This is not democracy, it is terrorism. Argument not force must govern in a democracy if democracy is to endure. 3 Thinking in terms of the future the point at which any discussion about educational change must begin is a recognition of the fact that society is undergoing a revolutionary change. But, surely there can be no solution to our problems except on the basis of the fundamental principles upon which human conduct should be based. As wisdom is never out of date we cannot do better than refer to opinions which have been recorded as coming from the great minds of the past. On the need for truth we do not require conviction but it is interesting to refer to what has been said through the years. Nineteen hundred years ago St Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians, told them to ‘Have truth for a belt bound tightly around their waists’. Gladstone, Prime Minister of England, said “Where there is known to be a common object, the pursuit of truth, there should also be a studious desire to interpret the adversary in the best sense his words will fairly bear, to avoid whatever widens the breach and to make the most of whatever tends to narrow it'! In his book 'The Making of Israel' James Cameron, in the words of a reviewer, Newman Rosenthal, 'Drives home the significance of the events that initially sowed the seeds of a cruel and self-wrought inevitability and an abiding paralysing distrust'. 'Both sides', he said, 'have spread confusion and misunderstanding, and the great casualty is, as always, truth.' Campbell, in his composition 'The Pleasures of Hope', clearly gives the message about the importance of truth: 'Truth ever lovely since the world began, the foe of tyrants and the friend of man'. I turn now to the question of obedience to authority or the need for discipline. Ever since there has been a theory of man in relation to the community, thought has had to be given to the question of authority: whom or what shall we obey, and to what extent, and why? Should we obey the laws? Everyone must decide for himself what is the real authority of the law. That question is difficult enough when it confronts us as individuals, but generally it is raised by our membership of some society, as for example a club or trade union.
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