This thesis takes as its basic premise the need for
more democratic educational structures and practices. By
examining the restructuring of public secondary schooling
provisions in New South Wales in the period after 1950 it
argues that public schools in Australia are not democratic
institutions.
Rather than being democratic institutions public
schools, it is maintained, reflect the private interests of
members of so-called "professional and professionalizing
groups", or, more precisely, of those with assets in
credentials or assets in organization employed within
monopoly capitalist enterprises and state enterprises. The
employment domain of these groups is characterized by
bureaucratic forms of control.
The private interests of these groups are class
interests in that they pertain to the maintenance of the
material interests of those with assets in credentials and
assets in organization through the monopoly of special
knowledge and skills and reflect the class structure of a
society in which monopoly capitalism has become the
dominant economic, and, therefore, political and
ideological, force.
As the above outline suggests, in attempting to address
the question of inequality in secondary schooling, marxist
theories and categories, most notably those pertaining to
class formation and class struggle, are drawn upon.
In addition, the thesis maintains that the private
interests of those with assets in credentials or assets in
organization are "naturalized" in and through the ideology
of individualism and of meritocracy. By examining the
actual way in which the labour force was being restructured
in the post-war period the thesis provides one avenue of
critique of these constructions and attempts to demonstrate
the limits of equality of opportunity in a class-based
society.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219261 |
| Date | January 1986 |
| Creators | Pope, Beverley, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Beverley Pope |
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