Welcome back Bakunin - Life chances in Australia: some notes of discomfort
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 3: Webs of Power
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Frank Moorhouse
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The first topic for consideration today is this: will it be feasible for the working masses to know complete emancipation as long as the education available to those masses continues to be inferior to that bestowed upon the bourgeois, or, in more general terms, as long as there exists any class, be it numerous or otherwise, which, by virtue of birth, is entitled to a superior education and a more complete instruction?
Does not the question answer itself?
– Mikhail Bakunin, anarchist, "Equality in Education", Egalité, July 31, 1869
[For "masses" read Australian children without financial or social access to elite schools and for "bourgeois" read those who have]
Answer: Does the question answer itself? Well, Mikhail, not quite, but yes. Well, YES.
BEGINNINGS: I began this essay as an exploration of what I call the "new networking" – the conscious seeking of advantageous connection – as a pathway for enhancing "life chances". But this led me back to older matters now almost unspoken, matters of egalitarianism and the fair go.
SOME CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN SAYINGS: I have written down some comments made to me recently by Australians about the nature of contemporary egalitarianism: It's not what you know but who you know (the most common saying about these matters that I came across)
Creating a level playing field
Insider trading, and "insider everything"
We got her into a good school
He went to a good school
Not in the loop
She's a good networker
She's an operator
Jack's as good as his master (now seldom heard)
And endless references to "the fair go". When did a fair-go society ever exist here? It probably did for a while after the cultural revolution of the 1960s-70s with feminism and gay liberation, awareness of indigenous disadvantage and other new awarenesses about the discrimination inherent in Australia. The fair go certainly did not exist before, regardless of much current dreaming of the time in the past when Australia was decent and believed in the fair go.
A YOUTHFUL PLEDGE: When I was a young journalist in Wagga Wagga, I made a pledge to myself not to socialise or befriend any publisher, reviewer or editor of a literary magazine until I had published my first 10 short stories.
I wanted to have my work accepted purely because of its quality and not because I was a friend or drinking mate of editors and publishers.
It seemed an "Australian" thing to do but more than that, I wanted to know if I could write and I wanted it to be a dispassionate and impersonal judgement.
Living in Wagga Wagga in the 1960s as a D-grade journalist, I found that pledge rather easy to keep.
GENERAL COSGROVE: "I am the senior military officer responsible for advising the Government on the Australian Defence Forces ... on the flight back from East Timor I told a staff officer who accompanied me that I looked forward to my posting as Land Commander Australia ... the beginning of what I thought would be the culminating posting of my career, [instead] I was appointed as the Chief of the Army and then to my present position as Chief of the Defence Force." – Major-General Peter Cosgrove speaking to the Sydney Institute last year.
General Cosgrove's words interested me. He seems to come from a tradition that does not seek promotion and, in fact, unless he is being modest, he does not even speculate on his possible promotions.
Throughout history, even in politics, this has been a traditional position: "I have never sought any office." Even if it is sometimes not strictly true, it is interesting that it is seen as a virtuous position. However, there is a tradition as old as this – and it may lead to more success – whereby a person seeks promotion and actively pursues it. Sometimes in our culture this person is called, disdainfully, a "self-seeker".
But the passive position implies a trust in "those above" to select the right person – that is, us. The tradition probably comes out of a belief in fate or destiny or divine order, and a belief in the fairness and judgement of our masters.
FORTUITOUS MEETINGS: "It was, admitted the head of Cranbrook's Old Boys' Union, a very fortuitous meeting. At a dinner organised in New York for US-based Old Cranbrookians, Sinclair Schofield (class of 1991) met Adam Bryan (class of 1983). Shortly afterwards, Schofield was headhunted to the Boston-based financial firm where Bryan was a senior partner."– Frank Walker, SundayLife, July 22, 2001
Cranbrook is an elite Protestant school in Sydney.
"Two lawyers, Warren Scott and Peter Noble, are visiting one of Australia's biggest companies, a household name. They are pitching for the company's corporate legal business. Scott and Noble are from Coudert Brothers, the US-based international law firm ... At the end of their sales pitch, the senior executive looks at Noble and says, ‘That's a Joey's tie, isn't it?' Noble replies, ‘It is.' The executive then turns to Scott and says, ‘Warren, you've got the job'."– Paul Sheehan, the (sydney) magazine, November 26, 2003
Joey's is the nickname of St Joseph's College, an elite Catholic school in Sydney. I was interested in the coy protectiveness of not mentioning the company with the "household name".
On the face of it these anecdotes feel to me almost like a crime. But then, I'm hypersensitive.
NOT SO FORTUITOUS: Jodee Rich of One.Tel was a Cranbrook classmate of Rodney Adler of HIH. Adler introduced Cranbrook old boy James Packer and Packer put millions into One.Tel. It was a financial disaster. The path of privileged networks doesn't always run smooth (see PRIVILEGE IS BAD FOR THE ECONOMY, STUPID below).
It could also be that old school networks in life are slowly superseded by or evolve into or lead into talent/power networks where one's school recedes as a passport, becomes invisible, becomes the hidden platform upon which everything else rests.
WEBER 101 – "LIFE CHANCES": It was time to go back to Max Weber (1864-1920) the economist and sociologist. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge Classics) Weber discussed the impact of parties, class and status groups on what he called "life chances".
"All communities are arranged in a manner that goods, tangible and intangible, symbolic and material are distributed. Such a distribution is always unequal and necessarily involves power. Classes, status groups and parties are phenomena of the distribution of power within a community.
"Status groups make up the social order, classes the economic order, and parties the legal/political order. Each order affects and is affected by the other. Unlike classes, status groups ... are determined by the distribution of social honour. A specific style of life is shared by a status group and the group itself is defined by those with whom one has social intercourse. People from different economic classes may be members of the same status group, if they share the same specific style of life. Criteria for entry into a status group may take forms such as the sharing of kinship groups or certain levels of education."
Having reached this point in my notes, my thinking went off to the elite private schools as status groups, membership of which is given to children by their parents.
WHO'S WHO IN AUSTRALIA: How many people are really hurt, and in what ways, by having a discriminatory educational system? It is difficult to quantify the damage done to individuals because of educational discrimination – those left behind, the discouraged, the give-ups, the excluded – or the individual suffering, let alone the suffering and waste of misgoverned companies and resources. But I think we have to assume that there is personal, social and economic damage being done by educational discrimination.
In her classic study of privilege in Australia, Journeyings (Melbourne University Press, 1993), Professor Janet McCalman, head of the University of Melbourne's Department of History and Philosophy of Science, analysed where those in the Australian Who's Who 1988 went to school – the leaders in business, professions and politics. The older private schools dominate. Melbourne's Scotch College predominates. Who's Who, of course, reflects the outcome of the past 50 years.
If this is a true reflection of the spread of talent in the upper reaches of our society and not a result only of privileged networks – fair enough. If it is not, we are in real trouble as a society. Again, it could be that those who control Who's Who went to private schools. Maybe Scotch.