Teacher Learning has an air of human and classroom authenticity. The authors obviously believe that it’s good to be a ‘bloody teacher’ and that there is much to offer to the community and much fulfilment in the profession of teaching. They are educational optimists, but hard-headed and thoughtful optimists, who are more at home in the dust of the classroom than in the fine dust of theses.

Since (Paul) could not be persuaded otherwise and since the planning committee were all agreed that the ten periods of integrated work should not be reduced to six, a compromise was reached in which the deputy principal allotted twelve periods to them, two of which were for unadulterated English.

These writers know the problems in changing a curriculum and they respect the difficulties, aware that the suggestions they forcefully make are not easy solutions. This book is itself a demonstration that it is possible to put the authors’ ideas into practice, for they have produced an integrated, co­operative account of the directions they think education should take. Maria ‘came to personify such consensus as the contributors share.’ ‘We might have disagreed in detailed ideological discussion, we have seldom disagreed about what to do in schools.’

Barnes and Dow look in detail at ‘topic-centred teaching’, pointing out the difficulties as well as the strengths of such an approach. Their conclusion is that

It would be doctrinaire to insist that the best way is always through interdisciplinary teaching ... Neither do we want to rule out ‘straight’ subject teaching; but we do feel that, since the major dilemmas we face can rarely be solved by the insight of one ‘straight’ subject pupils should gain experience in calling on a number of ‘disciplines’ through problem or topic-centred studies.

Gough looks at theories and practices of curriculum development.

He warns about the dangers of setting ‘aims and objectives’ too definitively, because such a procedure can restrict achievement. The discussion is interesting in its implications for both teacher and child education though I do not find it convincing in all its detail. ‘The multicultural school ‘is discussed by Bill Hannan. He argues that ‘the general curriculum needs to be revised so that it is democratic, pluralistic and free from bias.’ This is ambitious and radical, but Hannan makes a convincing case that such reform is both necessary and possible.

There has to be a commitment to the community outside the school, primarily to parents. Parents would be represented in the school's structure of government, and the content of the curriculum, among other things, would be a subject of continual discussion with parents – decisions and directives no, except perhaps of the most general kind.

An impressive general aim; Hannan’s detailed discussion convinces that it is both possible and necessary. White looks at the political element in any curriculum.

Nowadays the proposal for a ‘core’ is a way of maintaining the status quo – via state power with a populist additive in some cases, and via a dynamic consensus limited to what is immediate. The alternative which seems necessary, but is not mentioned, is the development of a core which draws from tradition and accumulated knowledge in the creation of a new social life.

There is a challenge here that many parents and teachers will find threatening. But the arguments are very hard to resist.

The two essays at the end of the book challenge easy dichotomies about human nature and about the role of school. Foster and Dow argue that ‘Maria is right to reject a simplistic either/or approach to Behaviourism on the one hand, and romanticism on the other.’ In her essay ‘Yin and Yang,’ Dow warns Maria against the polarisation created by ‘those who demand that schools induct children into the best of the culture and those who demand that they interpret and respond to pupils’ needs’. ‘Maria is at the stage in her teaching when she needs to be alerted and forearmed against such dualism – to see it as untenable and therefore unprofitable.’ These two essays are an important part of an important book. The authors are not beguiled by simplistic solutions. They work within an intellectual framework but they are not dewy eyed about any particularism. This is a reflective book that takes into account the experiments of the sixties and seventies, and seeks to go beyond them. The fear of teacher training and classroom teaching retreating into a cave – on the other side of the tracks from Plato’s but in sight of it – is a real one. Maria has been taught a great deal in the course of this book. There is much here for any reader, as parent, teacher, or citizen. There are occasional plunges into the dark alleys of education jargon, but generally the book is accessible to all with an interest in education. Viva Maria!

Melbourne Studies in Education 1982 (edited by Stephen Murray-Smith) and 1983 (edited by Imelda Palmer) are quite different books from Teacher Learning. This series, now up to issue twenty-five, presents collections of essays on varying educational topics. In both these volumes there is a considerable amount of education history. Most of the essays are valuable, specialist contributions, which are a good sabbatical year away from the classroom. In the 1982 volume, Leonie Sandercock writes a very interesting account of urban studies in Australia, making some informative and thought-provoking comments on urban development and attitudes towards it. In a collection like this, one gives one’s money and takes one’s pick, according to one’s interests – and no doubt prejudices. D.T. Merrett’s ‘The School at war: Scotch College and the Great War’ offers much information on attitudes of a certain part of the community, but it is written in a tone that could well belong to an article commissioned by the headmaster for the college annual.

The cycle of work, play and worship went on term after term, year after year ... School work was never neglected, masters who joined up were replaced, and Scotch continued to enjoy great success at the various public examinations, each year carrying off a swag of distinctions, exhibitions and government senior scholarships.

Merrett does not ask any hard question raised by the material. More valuable are two other historical studies: ‘Mary Helena Stark: the troubles of a nineteenth century state school teacher’ by R.J.W. Selleck, and ‘The trouble with Harry: the making of an Irish-Australian Rebel’ by Richard Ely. Both Stark and Foran came into conflict with the educational authorities in Victoria, and in particular with Clive Henry Pearson, the Minister of Public Instruction. Stark won her battle for recognition as a teacher of a certain level in the hierarchy, and Selleck’s account indicates some of the problems of all teachers, and women in particular, in gaining appropriate recognition. Foran, a more eccentric and colourful character, lost his battle to keep his job. Ely gives us a revealing study of the bureaucracy at work, and an enjoyable picture of the first president of the Anti-humbug League.

And so you take your pick. I enjoyed George Seddon’s highly individual essay on how we should find the ‘skills we will need to manage a resources boom if there is one.’ Letting the ‘if’ sit quietly aside like an observer at a Labor Conference on uranium, Seddon points out the surprising fact that ‘many Australians with high-level managerial skills have a country background.’ There is a refreshing tongue-in-cheek quality to what is a thoughtful discussion of resources, management and social background. On the other hand, I found Joan Lindsay’s ‘Scattered Memories of a Non-Education’ little more than mildly entertaining, and rather precious. And so it goes. You can take the very particular (‘Teachers on Strike: “Going into Conference” in 1920’ by I.K.F. Birch and A. P. Joyce) or the large sweep (‘Education in Theory, Schooling in Practice: The experience of the last hundred years’ by Brian Simon). Birch and Joyce give a detailed if rather ponderous account of an important battle in the teaching profession’s history. Simon tackles a large subject in very large terms. On the other hand, P. W. Musgrave in ‘From Brown to Bunter: A Sociological account of a Minor Literary Genre’ gives so many titles that there is little room for real discussion of an interesting topic.

Melbourne Studies in Education 1983 is another miscellany. Again there is a strong emphasis on the history of education. M. A. Clements and Peter Jones write on ‘The education of Atawe.’ Atawe, ‘who was born in a remote village in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea’, now works in the mathematics department of the Papua New Guinea University of Technology in Lae. Jones and Clements give an enlightening and sympathetic portrait of a man who has moved from village life to an important position in Western education in Papua New Guinea. There is a friendly paternalism about this account, in which they refer to access to Atawe’s psychological testing and to letters from missionaries discussing him. From Lae to Italy; in ‘Working-class Education: The nature and role of ‘the intellectual’ in the writings of Antonio Gramsci’, Donald Cave discusses the writings of a Marxist philosopher who died in a Mussolini jail. Stimulating and thought provoking in a solemn, remote way. More obviously relevant is Sheila Spear’s ‘Secondary Education for All: The evolution of policy and practice in Victorian secondary schools 1968-1978’. (The titles of some of these essays are written in a style that the state’s namesake would have been very familiar with.) After a general discussion of attempts at educational and particularly curriculum reform, Spear looks at the attempts to put these into practice at the Ferntree Gully High School. At this point, this volume lurches towards the classroom. Spear provides an informative account that is complementary to the discussion in Teacher Learning. Lindsay Tanner provides much useful information in his account of the development of Labor Party educational policy in the years before Whitlam took office. D.S. Anderson analyses ‘Access to Higher Education: The link between admissions and social class’. He has some important things to say about social status and tertiary education, and about the pecking order of universities, colleges of advanced education and TAFE. Marjory Theobald gives an account of ‘Women Teachers’ Quest for Salary Justice in Victoria’s Registered Schools, 1919-1946’ and Denis Grundy examines ‘Free Schooling and the State in South Australia, 1875-1898’.

There is no doubt that these two volumes contain important and valuable scholarship. But they are permeated with the scent of the academy not of the school. After reading these two volumes, I did long for an article with a short title and a student subject: ‘Education and Unemployment’; ‘Education for Leisure’; ‘A Year’s Hard Labour: Sentenced to H.S.C.’; or ‘Who’d be a Bloody Teacher?’. So, I turn gratefully back to Teacher Learning and Maria and her students.