Former NSW
Labor Premier
(1976- 86) and National
ALP President , Neville Wran ,
told the Street
Royal Commission in
1983 that Balmain boys
don’t cry. He had
attended the Nicholson Street Public
School , Balmain, before going
on to Fort
Street Boys’ High , Sydney University and becoming a QC.
A rare find
by a Little Darwin runner
in North Queensland may
explain why Balmain
kids are so stoic . It came in
the form
of the
1919 book, THE SCHOOL AND THE
WORLD, by Victor Gollancz
and David Somervell (also authors of Political Education in a Public School ), published by Chapman
and Hall, London. Riddled
by
bookworm, its spine cover missing
, pages foxed , bumped, it
contained the Balmain Teachers’ College Library bookplate
and numerous library
stamps throughout . And to make
it more interesting , inserted was a tram ticket
for tuppence halfpenny.
The
book once belonged to a
man who had a major
influence in Australian
teacher education , Scottish born and educated
Professor Alexander
Mackie, who married a
teacher; it is signed by him , with the date, 1919. Furthermore , the preface
carries the pencilled in information
that the book was donated 10/4/46 to the
Teachers College , Balmain , the year it
was
founded - perhaps by Mackie ?
Professor
Mackie was foundation principal of the newly established Sydney Teachers’ College from 1906 for 30 years concurrently from 1910 as Professor of Education at University of Sydney . In
these two positions he strongly influenced the academic
and professional preparation of NSW
teachers. In 1917 he co- edited the
magazine Schooling and established The Teachers’ College Press
In
the preface of the above book, the authors
explained that their previous book
about political education in
public school, written during WW1, had attracted a number of critical reviews ,one from the Westminster Gazette which asked if the
introduction of politics into the school
curriculum could open the way for Prussianism
in its most insidious form , the
conscription of educated opinion. A Church Times reviewer –virulently
hostile- appeared not merely to dislike their
educational policy , but to blaspheme against the very
idea of a liberal education. Most
reviewers, however , had given
a very warm welcome to the general
policy of the book.
Chapters
in the
above book have headings such as
Captured By The State ; The Making of “Politicians ” ; Public
Schools and Freak Schools (ones where
“radicals” , pupils from an "
intellectualist atmosphere" attend ; Morality ; Religion ; Curriculum ;
The Younger Generation and the Old.
Balmain Boy Neville
Wran obviously took to
politics like a duck
to water . Last year, aged
85, he entered a home for
the
aged where Gough
Whitlam also resides.
No doubt they get together now and again ... who could blame
them for
shedding a tear from
time to time
?
