Grammatical socialism

by Tom Clark.

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Unless you are passing through Queanbeyan or Bredbo, a drive into or out of Canberra usually takes you along Northbourne Avenue. Into Civic, you pass a couple of signs that would point you into the Australian National University, and crossing the Lake shows glimpses of that same institution. For me it has become a rather eerie recognition: there my father and his father before him made their careers as academics. They taught and researched there, and there they worked for their versions of what scholarship should be.

Axel was a wholehearted but non-dogmatic union member. He worked in the English Department, surrounded by colleagues he generally loved and who seemed pretty happy with his (eccentric) presence in return.

The campus was a place where Axel could be found in his element, generally good natured, but not always. When the Arts Faculty was making stupid decisions I remember Axel describing how he would speak up, be received with superficial politeness, and then find he was the only one voting against the line.

Sometimes Axel would actively do the numbers — a political game that, in the abstract, gave him endless pleasure, but which he was generally unwilling to play himself. Once he did it for me, though — unrequested. The headstrong leadership of the ANU postgraduate students’ association at the time wanted to disaffiliate from the national peak body at the height of a federal government campaign for so called Voluntary Student Unionism. (It was my job to thwart the disaffiliation push.) This kind of ‘ratting’ horrified Axel, so he called a series of meetings with postgraduate students he knew, introducing them to me, and urging them to turn out and vote against the disaffiliation. In a general meeting where only 52 people turned up and cast votes, this kind of lobbying was significant. The outcome was a victory for family as well as for common sense!

Back at Tasmania Circle, there was always talk about how universities work. Manning had strong opinions which he liked to couch in even-handed, often in utterly opaque, language. Dymphna had strong opinions which she liked to express in clear language. Generally their children fitted somewhere between these poles.

Good education was something worth fighting for. As a teacher, you strove to teach rigorously and sympathetically. As a researcher, you strove to share understanding rather than plain ‘knowledge.’ As a member of the university, you strove to overcome the moronic innovations that management was constantly attempting to force upon you. Axel and Dymphna shared a suspicion that email was one of these.

Those values have a ring of positivism now: their steadfastness and certitude look rather implausible in the context of the present-day crisis in Australian education. That is predominantly a crisis of values – what should we teach to whom and why? – ahead of the resources, standards, and ethics that dominate current debates about education — but resources, standards, and ethics are important consequences of the values.

In many ways the Clark family’s educational values have been conservative: sound grammar was especially revered, for example. Manning, Dymphna, Sebastian, Katerina, Axel, and Rowland were generous and compassionate teachers, but the creeping menace of ‘soft marking’ was held particularly evil at the family dinner table. A romantically heightened passion for rhetoric and the arts is a common conservative trait. The house remains filled with evidence of that trait, as does Axel’s old study in Sydney.

At the same time, however, the purpose was always deeply progressive. The Whitlam revolution in higher education was a great moment for the Clarks. Dawkins’ 1989 reintroduction of fees was a great betrayal, despite the equity-oriented sweeteners in the package. Manning called it ‘a victory of pragmatic concerns’, which was worse than fraud or greed: it was on a par with conscription.

This socialist-conservative doctrine of education was more clearly understood than clearly spoken, but I retain a kernel of it as follows. Education forms people. Where society needs fixing, education has the capacity to transform it. Through education, therefore, society can set out to transform itself. Education is the most coherent, subtle, and purposeful ‘change agent’ at society’s disposal. That is why some powerbrokers fear any educational curriculum they do not control. It is a doctrine that leans towards labour rather than capital, but at the same time it is sceptical about the shallowly utilitarian state as an educator, no matter which party is in power.

Rather more figuratively, education may be likened to Skidbladnir, the ship of the Norse gods. That ship had three magical properties. First, it was the largest of all ships. Secondly, it could be folded up so small you could fit it in your pocket. Thirdly, if ever it got becalmed, its sails could summon their own wind. A good education has all those features: it is vast in its embrace, yet of negligible encumbrance, and it may transform the circumstances in which it operates. They are extremely powerful properties.

Augustin Lodewycks, Dymphna’s father, introduced the study of Old Norse language and literature to the University of Melbourne. Now, despite the efforts of John Martin in retirement, the subject has just about died there. The same fate has overtaken it at the ANU, despite the post-retirement efforts of Ralph Elliott. Sydney is alone among Australian universities employing people to specialise in this esoteric but historically important discipline. Ideologies of managerialism and ‘relevance’ have all but banished it.

An ideology should not be condemned ideologically, Axel used to remind me. An ideology can be a good thing as well as a bad thing. For, as Voloshinov showed, grammar is a type of ideology…

Tom Clark is a research fellow in the Faculty of Education at Monash University.