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June 22nd, 2017
An article in today's higher education columns in 'The Australian' approvingly mentions Lewis Mumford as saying that traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. But Mumford's statement is purely descriptive and, without a context, one can't be sure if Mumford was being critical of traditionalists. One might say equally, and descriptively, that non-traditionalists are optimists about the future and pessimists about the past. In fact, there are plenty of examples to show that optimism is not invariably justified. Optimism for the future can provide a sense of purpose, but it may well be misplaced. But we live in times that wilfully denigrate an awareness of the past, as exemplified by Tony Blair who said, as I recall, that you don't drive a car by looking in the rear-vision mirror. However, definitions that may stick in the mind, or snappy statements like Blair's, convey nothing of the interaction of the past with the present and the future. We are what the past has led us to and made us. In our universities, it is virtually compulsory to be optimistic and up-beat on everything in front of our faces, as mind and memory are abandoned and we all 'go with the flow', whatever it is. There is little place in the conscious mind of today for William Faulkner's comment: 'The past is not dead, it is not even past'. Once we forget the past, we forget ourselves. When this happens to an individual it is called dementia, but it seems more-or-less to be OK when a society chooses it. In any case, optimism for the future need not be incompatible with respect for tradition and the past. Recommended reading is Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Smile or Die: How positive thinking fooled America and the world'. See also R. G. Collingwood's 'The Idea of History'. March 20th, 2017 Writing about the English critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), James Ley Writes in his book The Critic in the Modern World (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014): 'And despite the contradictions and evasions of his arguments, Arnold got a number of things right. He was largely right about the democratization of society and the social benefits of universal education; he was right about the public sphere and the tendency of unfettered public debate to generate clap-trap. We live in a society in which clap-trap, in the specific Arnoldian sense, is endemic, a society in which the role of the state as a means of cultivating social equality is often viewed with reflexive hostility. On these questions at least, Arnold can still claim a degree of relevance.' March 20th, 2017 Pure description does not arrive at any judgment. But, an analysis of issues tends to lead to judgment. Pure description may enable one to grasp a situation as it is or was. Of course it could be argued that any description is necessarily selective and therefore is based upon a prior judgment of what to select. But the question here is one of degree, not of absoluteness. For example, an analysis of different policies, even if dispassionate and carried out with an objective intent, leads to comparison and so judgment is hard to avoid, even if it is only implicit. March 20th, 2017 It seems to me that mathematics, science and engineering deal with concepts, ideas and activities whose intellectual validity is largely independent of social realities. It is this independence that makes the conclusions of these disciplines so definite and their conclusions so certain in comparison with the social sciences. Now, when one reads policy makers in the current economic mould, they implicitly treat economics as a genuine science by presenting it in mathematical and scientific ways (as they are imagined). This provides an illusion of apparent rigour often while ignoring the complexities of the social context to which economics supposedly applies. There is thus a danger of a serious disjunction between economic policy, proposed or actual, and the consequences and realities of its application. That danger is very often ignored, but is always evident to those on the receiving end. August 11th, 2013 There can be an unfillable chasm between intellectual ambition and intellectual hunger. The former is just another form of ambition, which we are all expected to have or we are thought strange at best. As for the latter, it must be felt as a basic need, like food. Even more, it can be consuming of the person. As an example, there is Renée in Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In our universities, intellectual hunger long ago has been supplanted by ambition and the "right" career moves. In any case, intellectual hunger has always been rare. August 11th, 2013 There is a review of Sir Thomas Browne's "Urne-Buriall" in The London Review of Books. Despite having been written in 1642, his words "The iniquity of oblivion blindely scattereth her poppy" still have force, even (especially?) today. August 11th, 2013 According to Tim Elliott in the Sydney Morning Herald of August 10th, when Kim Williams became CEO of News Corp Australia in 2011 he proceeded ...to outline a fresh path for News, a company he saw as having relied too long on "feeling" and not enough on hard data. There would be an end, he said, to "the Royal Order of the Tummy Compass" - code for gut instinct - and a new regime of data-led, research-reliant management.Well, it's rather hard to see that Williams made much difference in this regard, as some would say that "the Royal Order of the Tummy Compass" remains a characteristic of News journalism. Of course, there's also the issue of independence and conformity in News Corp around the world, as evinced at the time of the Iraq War, when I think not one News Corp publication took a contrary view. After all, when one knows the expectations and answers in advance, the "tummy compass" is a pretty good guide as to what to write. As well, the "Royal Order of the Tummy Compass" may be a better way to sell newspapers, as distinct from an analysis of issues. Comparing The Australian with the Sydney Morning Herald, one would have to say that the Herald has has had a stronger tradition of independent journalism, based upon more dispassionate analysis and the complexities that facts throw up. Even so, there is good journalism at the Australian, but the marked ideological tone and simplistic nostrums are far too marked. On the other hand, there are some Herald journalists and commentators who remind one of News Corp. The decline of quality journalism and "dumbing down" of Fairfax is not to be celebrated, despite the apparent pleasure it has afforded those with a personal interest. And the resignation of Kim Williams will leave continuing problems for The Australian in particular, as it has no automatic immunity and is reputed to be losing $3,000,000 per month. At least it does have a lower height from which to fall. The future of journalism has passed from the hands of benign moguls like Lord Thompson, and it seems as though it will be in the hands of the Rupert Murdochs and Gina Rineharts of this world -- hardly an anomaly when post-modern intellectuals tell us, in effect, that knowledge is no more than power, and truth an illusion propagated for purely political ends. Such opinions may be philosophically void, but considered as prophecies on the state of shared public knowledge and opinion, they may well be fulfilled. July 5th, 2013 Just in case anyone is more seriously interested in the issues raised in the posts below for July 4th and July 5th, I recommend the book by Mats Alvesson: The Triumph of Emptiness: consumption, higher education & work organization (Oxford 2013). It shows a close familiarity with the Australian scene, although it has an international context. Alvesson writes in a low-key, analytical way, but his understated critique is devastating when it looks at the confusion, sloppy thinking, conflating of different concepts, and what he correctly identifies as behaviours of 'grandiosity' and 'educational fundamentalism' in higher education policy. July 5th, 2013 For anyone with an interest in higher education policy in Australia and who has some historical knowledge, it's rather demoralising to read the editorial "Academic Quality Must be the Universities' Main Priority" in The Australian's editorial of July 4th. It reads, in part, During the last three years, while the leading Group of Eight research and teaching institutions climbed the world rankings, other sections of our higher education system languished from poor quality control.Are they serious? Does The Australian really mean only "the last three years"? The writing was on the wall when John Dawkins brought down the 'White Paper" in 1988, 25 years ago. At the time, I seem to recall that all The Australian's education correspondent could say was "it's the way to go". The Dawkins' policies have simply been followed, to varying degrees by all governments since that time. During that period, the "right" and The Australian were virtually silent, during an extended period of major intellectual and cultural change in our universities. Why do they choose to reject those changes only at such a late time, when they are now irreversible? All we are seeing today is the inevitable consequence of pursuing those policies and educational attitudes to ever greater extremes over 25 years. As well, the statement incorporating the words "while the leading Group of Eight research and teaching institutions climbed the world rankings" is rather naive. Make no mistake, the Group of Eight have their own quality problems as a result of the changed intellectual and cultural environment. But, of course, no university wishes to say it has any problems, does it? After all, that would go against all their own marketing programs, as well as inviting the charge that they are not being properly managed (an intellectually vacuous but effective technique used by governments over the last 25 years to force universities to conform). July 4th, 2013 New Higher Education minister Kim Carr (The Australian, July 4th 2013) has said he may review the power of universities to enrol as many students as they think are qualified. A pity that "being qualified" means no more than "applying to enroll", at least if one is not fussy about the degree. If there is a change, Catholic University VC Greg Craven says: It's saying to those universities that signed up to the government's participation and equity agendas that they have to bear the cuts. The burden would go ... to those of us that embraced key landmark bipartisan reforms.Well, he's right. But Professor Craven should not be surprised. Policy is consistently short term and on-again-off-again. First we had AUQA then we had TEQSA. TEQSA has hardly got going and already there are suggestions it could be scrapped. Then we had the ERA for one year now we don't. First we had the ALTC until it was summarily scrapped without giving any reasons that had the slightest force, and now we have the OLT. Minister Carr says that the influx of students means we need to consider the quality of degrees. Well they should have thought of that before setting the current targets, as the problems were utterly predictable, just as they were with the ERA (see below, June 1st 2011, for déja vu). The present influx of students is not necessarily in their longer term interests. The exciting careers many imagine lie in wait will turn out to have been a mirage, created by the marketers, both political and institutional. "Social equity" is not necessarily a zero-sum game, but with current levels of enrolments, it now is. Where is the traditional concept of quality in all this? Well, with its Orwellian mind-set, AUQA decreed that "quality" is "fitness for purpose". But, since it's all about pleasing the government, a better definition would be that quality is "doing what the government wants at any instant"--after all, is there any difference? June 21st, 2013 In 1970 in his book The Atrocity Exhibition , the British novelist J G Ballard wrote: All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms.Well, things have come a long way since 1970. "Reinventing" oneself is now a desirable and advisable thing to do, even for the most trivial of purposes. What is more, we are led to believe it's easily carried out and is generally successful. But the fact that such stuff is taken seriously shows how shallow a conception we have of ourselves and of what we are here for. June 19th, 2013 Here is Andrew Riemer reviewing Lionel Shriver's novel Big Brother, in the Sydney Morning Herald of June 15-16th 2013: Page after page reveals how what might once have been sterling civil and personal virtues have been debased (even in bucolic Iowa) by the pursuit of fame and publicity, and by the worship of one's own image. June 19th, 2013 Economic historian Robert Fogel (1926-2013) recently received an obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald of 17th June 2013. His book on the economics of black slavery apparently argued that in the American south in the nineteenth century, the slaves were healthier, lived longer, and were better fed than the north's free white workers. Not surprisingly, his book received a lot of criticism, on the grounds that it was an apology for slavery. His reply was that the critics confused economics with morality, and that morality is higher than economics. Of course, today we are inclined to the reverse. But although we may not quite say that economics is higher than morality, in public we acquiesce implicitly in the idea that economics and morality are more-or-less on the same level. That's because morality and ethics are collective, they transcend the individual. On the other hand, a mindless and unrestrained liberal economics equates morality and worth precisely with individual choice, inclination and personal preference. The issue receives practically no discussion, although a conservative thinker like Burke was well aware of it when he wrote, amongst other things, "freedom, to be enjoyed, must be restrained". However, see Michael Sandel's book "What Money Can't Buy". Incidentally, Burke's comment shows how we are very confused, in conflating economic liberalism with conservatism. Michel Houellebecq in his novel, translated into English as Atomised, explores related themes in a different, controversial, way. December 23rd, 2011 Australian composer Brett Dean, is quoted in the ABC's Limelight magazine of December 2011: Classical music is still deemed a luxury or an unnecessary whim for a lot of people in Australia, and that's the difference you encounter as a young musician when you come to Europe. What we do actually matters to people in Europe. It's like food for them!Of course, it's not just music for which similar comments could be made. December 9th, 2011 Steve Rose's interview with Russian film director Aleksandr Sokurov should be read (Guardian Weekly, 9th-15th December, 2011). Sokurov's best known film is Russian Ark, a tour of the works and history of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, filmed in a single take. Other films of his are on Hitler, Hirohito, Stalin and Faust. He says: It's impossible to have this power, because it doesn't really exist. It only exists to the extent to which people are ready to submit to it. Power is not material. People are more afraid of responsibility than anything else. In reality, greatness and power are incompatible. Suddenly, God sent us Gorbachev. Otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you now. October 7th, 2011 "David Icke, a former BBC sports presenter and spokesman for the Green Party, believes the human race was engineered and secretly controlled by a band of reptilian shape-shifters from the Draco constellation. He has sold out all of his four lectures, in Perth, Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Sydney, the venue for which, in a clear sign of the relativism Aaaronovitch warns of, has been kindly provided by the University of New South Wales"--article in the Australian, August 27--28th 2011. October 7th, 2011 "David Icke, a former BBC sports presenter and spokesman for the Green Party, believes the human race was engineered and secretly controlled by a band of reptilian shape-shifters from the Draco constellation. He has sold out all of his four lectures, in Perth, Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Sydney, the venue for which, in a clear sign of the relativism Aaaronovitch warns of, has been kindly provided by the University of New South Wales"--article in the Australian, August 27--28th 2011. October 7th, 2011 "If all narratives are relative, we are lost. [Relativism] doesn't care to distinguish between the scholarly and the slapdash, the committed researcher and the careless loudmouth, the scrupulous and the demagogue"--David Aaaronovitch September 25th, 2011 " Your books are truly sacred: no one touches them" -- Stendahl's bookseller to Stendahl. Quoted in "With Stendahl", by Simon Leys, Black, Melbourne, 2010. September 25th, 2011 "...who would give up the chance to spend some hours with Stendahl?" -- Simon Leys. September 25th, 2011 "Australia's is not an intellectual culture" --Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald 23rd September, 2011. (Correct--anyone in doubt should spend some time in an Australian university.) September 25th, 2011 The radical is always struck by how badly society works; the conservative by how well it works. September 19th, 2011 For the relativist, reality is no more than human opinion; for the economic liberal, it is no more than human desire. September 18th, 2011 To the mind of the modern economic liberal, everything is a commodity. The exception may be freedom itself -- but why only freedom? We are never told. September 18th, 2011 We have digitised information and it, in its turn, has digitised us. June 1st, 2011 Innovation Minister Kim Carr's statement (The Australian, Higher Education Supplement, 1st June) that rankings of research journals would be dropped, is a huge backdown. Minister Carr is quoted as saying ..their existence [the ranking of journals] was focusing ill-informed, undesirable behaviour in the management of research.Well, of course. What else did the Minister expect? Did the Minister expect that universities would continue to want their staff to publish in journals for which the ERA had only contempt? These "unintended consequences" were entirely predictable, revealing yet again the level of competence and the simplistic thinking in higher education policy. Nevertheless, journal rankings can produce a type of measure of research achievement, even though the crudity of the implementation has been palpable in this case. But where does all this leave the Minister's statement earlier this year that the Government is not in the business of funding what he called "second-rate research"? May 16th, 2011 "History is not dead. It is not even past." -- William Faulkner. April 23rd, 2011 Paintings that left a mark from the Archibald Prize Exhibition: Pam Tippet's cool and detached look at herself, larger-than-life portrait of gallery owner Ray Hughes enjoying himself in a Parisian cafe, and maybe the winning portrait of Margaret Olley, but it was very large and hard to see owing to the crowds. April 4th, 2011 Mr Michael Andrew is the chairman of KPMG. He is also the chairman of the Business Council of Australia's education task force. He said (The Australian 30th March), in launching the Council's higher education policy, I keep saying to universities that I am your major customer. I take 750 of your product each year.This is further revealing of the dominant crass thinking about the relationship between universities and business. The point is that customers pay for goods or services. If businesses like KPMG are good "customers", they should be paying for it. But what is KPMG paying for the "product" it receives? The answer is: "nothing". The distortion and abuse of language, the use of analogies that are inaccurate at best and dishonest at worst, and confused and self-serving arguments, and plain confusion, now permeate public policy discussion on education in Australia.
Another area where business has received a free load is in some research linkage grants. Some of these have been serious and worthwhile collaborations between universities and business. But there have also been those that have been little more that marketing exercises for business, funded by the Australian taxpayer.
We consider it good to be successful. But we rarely think about what may lie behind that success, nor of its effects. November 24th, 2010 We cannot escape history. That is why we should try and understand it. November 22nd, 2010 Former Prime Minister John Howard is quoted in The Australian of November 6-7th as saying I was delighted to have his formidable namesake Alan [Jones], whose audience ratings would make any politician drool, launch my book.There's always a market for emotive, self-indulgent and irrational discussion on the airwaves. John Howard's logic seems to be that the popularity of Alan Jones must demonstrate his worth and the quality of his program. Very postmodern, and an all too familiar result of conflating market demand and popularity with value. Although I'm by no means a denigrator of John Howard, I think this episode does reveal one of his characteristic weaknesses. But, looking beyond the immediate occasion, it revealed, just a little, something of how our society operates. October 28th, 2010 In The Australian of October 20th: "It's perfectly clear that this idea of being able to call a Master's qualification a 'doctor of' is not permissible under the existing protocols," said former education minister John Dawkins, who chairs the council that crafted a controversial new Australian Qualifications Framework.But the irony is that the one person most responsible for the confusion in Australian postgraduate degree nomenclature must surely be the very same John Dawkins. For, it was his policies as education minister over 20 years ago that saw universities as little more than "business corporations", engaged in job-traing rather than education. Those policies have been followed uncritically by all subsequent bureaucracies, ministers and governments. The perceived need to 'compete' and the marked pressure to increase their independent income, was the main reason universities introduced a plethora of new degrees designed to cater for every niche in the 'market', and this is continuing. Since there is only a limited terminology for degrees, it was inevitable that some degrees with the same or very similar titles would vary markedly in terms of standards and attainments. So, John Dawkins is simply reaping what he has sowed. But some things are constant in all this --- the ignorance and the prescriptive nature of government in the area, a lack of awareness of the consequences of its own policies, and the lack of spine in the higher education jellyfish. October 28th, 2010 Reviewing a Print Award exhibition in Fremantle (the Sydney Morning Herald, 27th October 2010), Christopher Allen writes: Does anything made by a printing machine qualify as a print? The judges declare that both of these works 'inform a rich interrogation of printmaking and its processes', which demonstrates once again how the collapse of grammar precedes the breakdown of clear reasoning. In fact, these works show explicit contempt for printmaking and its processes.He's right about the grammar. The language we use cannot be separated from the quality of reasoning. That's one reason why our universities and government policy are so full of muddle and confusion. October 28th, 2010 Writing about the documentary Inside Job, Kathleen Parker says ....investment bankers knew the mortgage loans they were packaging and selling were junk...Not only that, Wall Street insiders were betting against their own customers and institutions...the cosy relationship between Wall Street and Ivy League academia, wherein economists push policies that benefit them financially...In some cases, business professors and economists at top US universities were shown to have conflicts of interest as they advanced policies for which they had been paid directly or that would otherwise benefit them.....the game had been rigged so that only a few were in positions to get rich at the expense of the middle class, not just here [the USA], but globally.(Her comments were reprinted on 18th October in The Australian.) Oh well, it's nice to know that business schools now intend to offer ethics as part of their MBA degrees. Of course, it must have been very hard for the academics and finance executives to work out things in a way that would produce such a self-beneficial result, but as we are continually told by the cognoscenti in these matters, it's only just that individual initiative should be rewarded. |
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September 18th, 2010
British PM David Cameron also says (Sydney Morning Herald, September 16th) ... the Holy See's broader message can help challenge us to ask searching questions about our society and how we treat ourselves and each other.Well, I won't be holding my breath waiting for anything to happen. After all, if we think the best thing for society is what we get by giving free rein to the fulfillment of private, individual and immediate desires, we can't expect too much concern for a wider good. September 17th, 2010 So, British PM David Cameron admires John Henry Newman because he "passionately followed his own conscience" (Sydney Morning Herald, September 16th). But under what passes for conservatism and liberalism these days, everything is a mere commodity, so why not conscience? With market demand as the sole arbiter of value, what is the value of conscience? September 17th, 2010 In the Sydney Morning Herald of 9th September, David Marr writes "Under Gough Whitlam, Labor heavies began to speak just like their leader. John Howard's admirers soon had his Sydney drawl. It's really beyond their control: the ventriloquism of power." September 6th, 2010 In his review of the film Everlasting Moments in The Australian of 14-15th August 2010, David Stratton refers to "The divide between introspective, humanistic, classical European cinema and violent, cartoonish American cinema..." April 30th, 2010 Peter Carey recently gave a talk at the New York Public Library. He was asked how he describes the kind of novels he writes, when asked. He offered a capsule version of the conversations he usually has on airplanes: "The person says, 'What do you do?' " "I write novels." "Should I know your name?" "Only if you're literate." Read about Peter Carey's talk. April 14th, 2010 Concerning research funding: at one time, the purpose of money was to produce research, but now it's the purpose of research to produce money. March 8th, 2010 "Universities have become self-censoring corporates, respectful of any feeding hand, be it government or, more ominously, the hand of populism. Indeed, promoting bogan culture as serious intellectual fare has become academia's defining game"--Elizabeth Farrelly, in the Sydney Morning Herald of 4th March, 2010. March 8th, 2010 "People worry about the pixels rather than the big picture"-- A C Grayling, British philosopher quoted in The Australian of February 20-21 2010. March 8th, 2010 "People read less, understand less and retain less than they did even 20 years ago. The mindless pap of undemanding popular culture is as responsible for this as the fast food industry is for the obesity epidemic. We are becoming a culture of fat, stupid know-nothings bombing the rest of the world into submission in wars we only understand in the comic book morality of Kiefer Sutherland's 24. It is in outstanding examples of popular culture like this that we can really see the future, and know that not only is it junk, it is dangerous junk." -- Playwright Stephen Sewell, in the Sydney Morning Herald of 10th February, 2010.
"Most people would rather die than think" --Anthony Grayling, British philosopher quoted in The Australian of 20-21st February 2010. February 25th, 2010 "There is no reasoning someone out of a position he has not reasoned himself into."--Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia, Picador, 2008, pp.61-62. February 25th, 2010 "No ideology can tolerate a full historical consciousness." --Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia, Picador, 2008, p.44. Again, just look at our universities. February 25th, 2010 "The driving force of any ideology stands revealed: it can't be coherent without being intolerant." --Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia, Picador, 2008, p.224. True--just look at our universities. February 1st, 2010 Drama and the novel are there to remind us of our madness, that sanity might be possible. January 10th, 2009 "This beautifully designed and illustrated book will be a great addition to any art lover's collection." --catalogue for the exhibition "Masterpieces from Paris" at the NGA, Canberra. John McDonald's comment in his review (Sydney Morning Herald January 2nd-3rd, 2010): "I can't recall ever reading such cheesy schlock on a publication by a reputable public gallery". McDonald won't get very far these days with such a conservative and elitist attitude -- who cares about the works? Lifestyle is where it's at. December, 2009 Intellectual self indulgence, the moment it appears, destroys the perception of the argument, however credible it might be otherwise. December, 2009 John Hirst writes in his The Shortest History of Europe (Black Inc., 2009), ...but to defend England the monarch needed a navy more than an army, and a navy could not be used to control the King's domestic enemies. In England, a king wanting to keep a large standing army was regarded as a threat to English liberties. This made it harder for English kings to gain a force that could, if needed, be turned on their subjects. Nevertheless, in the seventeenth century, English monarchs tried to become absolute monarchs on European lines.This line of thinking suggests that the distinctive political tradition that developed in England when compared to Europe has been due to what would have seemed to be a purely incidental fact -- namely, that the United Kingdom happened to occupy an island. Tuesday, 3rd November, 2009 We live in an age of schmooze, where we are encouraged to flatter, to suck up, to lie to those in power, to get what we want. Those who refuse to do so are banished like Cordelia who, with her father's stubbornness, refused to compete in his contest of flattery and falsehood for her own gain. Such contests have become too familiar in today's corporate and political worlds. Those who refuse to play it do so at their own peril.-- Susan Mitchell, writing in a review of a performance of Shakespeare's King Lear in The Australian, 27th October 2009. [Comments on King Lear. In Shakespeare's play, perhaps his greatest, King Lear gives away his kingdom to his false daughters Goneril and Regan, who are prepared to flatter him, while stripping his loyal but honest daughter, Cordelia, of everything.]
This is pretty typical of so much public comment in Australia -- if you're on the "right", it's great that Fox News has become so profitable and influential. But if you're on the "left", it's good to see the New York Times overlook any news embarrassing to Barak Obama. After all, politics is all it's about these days, whether you're on the right or the left. That's the way it has to be, with Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
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Thursday, 17th September, 2009
Intellectual self indulgence, the moment it appears, destroys the perception of the argument, however credible it might be otherwise. Wednesday 16th September, 2009 Incidentally, the former Australian Commonwealth Minister for Education, John Dawkins, was quoted as saying "The university is a place where one could not imagine going to except to get a job". But, even if he didn't say it, it was fully in keeping with the Government's policies and the type of thinking at that time, and it has continued into the present. Wednesday 16th September, 2009 Luke Slattery, in his article in the Higher Education Supplement (The Australian, 2nd September 2009), takes universities to task for their involvement with the Chinese Government's Confucius Institutes. He says ...the ...curriculum documents for these institutions give no suggestion that they intend to promote the best traditions of the modern university in its western form.So what? Since the acquiescence of Australia in the Dawkins concept of the university, one could hardly say that the universities themselves have been concerned to promote "the best traditions of the modern university". On the contrary, if the aims of the Confucius Institutes are mainly promotional, as Luke Slattery claims, there is every reason why universities will feel comfortable with close ties with them. After all, in addition to self promotion, they will offer "..executive training, strategy, human resources, marketing, management, legal and financial issues ..." The jargon is depressingly familiar, and is far removed from the Confucius of The Analects. Friday 10th July, 2009 "I have spread my dreams under your feet, Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." W. B. Yeats, 1865-1939. Monday 6th July, 2009 History has collapsed. Monday 6th July, 2009 We are now at the stage where our commercialized universities and career-orientated academics are far more mindful of the platitudes, mediocrities and trashy jargon of our our times, than with the the great ideas and intellectual achievements of the past, or even of the present. Monday 6th July, 2009 Plato's Gorgias is a gripping read, despite the seemingly "unpromising" material. Plato has a great sense of humour, and when Socrates concludes, following the arguments of Callicles, "there is little to tell between good people and bad people in terms of how good and bad they are...[and]... if anything, bad people are better than good people", I laughed out loud. Callicles launches an unrestrained attack on Socrates and, although Socrates comes out ahead in the argument, having tied everyone up in knots as expected, the issues, still strikingly relevant today, are not totally resolved. Robin Waterfield's translation and introduction are really good, in the Oxford World's Classics. Friday 3rd July, 2009 J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace is disturbing and confronting. Set at a transitional period in South Africa, it imprints the mind with both specific and wider issues of desire, understanding, sacrifice, and trust -- between both people and peoples. Wednesday 17th June, 2009 In today's Australian concerning Peter Costello's retirement from politics, Paul Kelly writes ".. Costello was too often the barrister in politics, lacking intellectual curiosity..". This hardly comes as a surprise, but it seems to be a bit rough on barristers, and upon Costello himself, given that we don't encourage intellectual curiosity at all, not even in our universities. Wednesday 17th June, 2009 Driving to work, there was an amazingly vivid, complete and long-lasting rainbow. There's a rational explanation, of course. But each explanation has its own level, and the phenomenon always transcends the explanation. That is what makes science possible -- and wonder also. 11th June, 2009 Michael Ignatieff's biography of Isaiah Berlin is worth reading for the account of Berlin's meetings with Akhmatova and Pasternak in 1945; but certainly not just for that. Although Ignatieff paints Berlin as a liberal, Berlin's sense of the tragic in human affairs, his awareness of the conflicts between values, and perhaps his fondness for the social circles in which he moved, mean he may well be classed as a conservative. For example, on the conflict between values, compare with the comment of the archetypal conservative, Edmund Burke: "Freedom, to be enjoyed, must be restrained". Indeed, Berlin's idea of "objective pluralism" is, like tolerance, a form of restraint. 9th June, 2009 "For so long I hated to be pitied, But one drop of your pity And I go round as if the sun were in my body. That's why there is dawn all around me. I go around creating miracles, That's why!" Anna Akhmatova, 1889-1966. [This is taken from Michael Ignatieff's biography of Isaiah Berlin]. 29th May, 2009 There's no question of the intensitivity of jargon change these days. The latest seems to be "definitional decisions". What's next? Maybe "definitivity of definitional decisions". 28th May, 2009 In today's Sydney Morning Herald, Elizabeth Farrelly reveals that journalism students who distributed a newsletter Festival News at the Sydney Writers' Festival had their publication impounded -- "freedom of voices does not mean freedom to blurt", said the Festival manager. But it transpires that the students' University was getting money out of the Festival by subsidizing the newsletter, a secret deal of which the students were unaware. Of course universities are mere business corporations now, so it must be appropriate for journalism to be just a form of public relations. After all, "it's only the perception that matters", as one Australian University Vice-Chancellor once said it. 21st May, 2009 The ABC news website today has the following report: "There have been dozens of assaults targeting young foreign students on and around the campus [of the University of Newcastle, Australia]. There are now calls for the police and university to do more before the situation threatens Australia's international education industry." It's good to get our priorities right. 11th May, 2009 "Quality assurance" is a higher education minister's and bureaucrat's delight. What a pity it has precious little to do with actual quality. And it "assures" nothing whatsoever, except perhaps its oxymoronic status. 11th May, 2009 A small sample of the wisdom of George Eliot: "...it is impossible for me to represent their [Dinah and Seth in her novel Adam Bede] diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still--if I have read religious history aright--faith, hope and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords; and it is possible, thank Heaven! to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings." 8th May, 2009 P. J. O'Rourke's address to the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) apparently drew attention to the tenth commandment -- "thou shalt not covet" (Exodus 20:17). I suppose it's just a matter of time before O'Rourke and the CIS draw attention to other Biblical texts such as: "go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,.." (Matthew 19:21), and "all...had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men..." (Acts 2:44-45). I look forward to seeing a Bible-based economics from O'Rourke and the CIS, with an appropriate selection of texts, of course. 5th May, 2009 "The free market is just a mechanism ... all the free market does is measure what people are willing to pay at a given moment for a given thing" -- P. J. O'Rourke. Of course. But then, why was market worship compulsory for so long? 3rd May, 2009 Quality is "degree of excellence" - Concise Oxford Dictionary, fourth edition (1961). Quality is "character with respect to excellence, fineness, etc., or grade of excellence" - Macquarie Dictionary, revised 3rd edition (2003). Quality is "degree or standard of excellence" - Collins English Dictionary (2006). Quality is "fitness for purpose" - Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA). Any old purpose seems good enough for AUQA. But who cares about the English language anyway? (Especially when it is so politically useful.) 3rd May, 2009 Contradictions are anathema to the corporate mind. 28th April, 2009 The Rudd Government's payments to individuals are unlikely to have the intended effect. But if Mr Rudd called them tax cuts, at least Peter Costello and the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) might say that they are a good idea. 28th April, 2009 "Networking" is the art of ingratiating oneself with those in a position to confer some possible advantage, thus encouraging discrimination in one's own favour. 27th April, 2009 Aspects of Professor Fred Hilmer's interview with Luke Slattery (The Australian, Higher Education Supplement, 1st April 2009) -- one tiny nail in the coffin of silent university conformity when faced with Government policy. But the lid is open, and there is no corpse. 27th April, 2009 "The more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual" - Mussolini. Higher Education policy, and the universities themselves, seem determined to prove that Mussolini was correct. 26th April, 2009 I bet you my mobile phone moves more quickly than your mobile phone. 26th April, 2009 In "The Bacchae" by Euripides, it finally struck this reader that the frenzies of the Bacchantes are a punishment from the god, not a gift. GO TO ROD'S HOME PAGE EMAIL: nillsen@uow.edu.au |