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S. C. B. G. S. ( SHORE) TRIDENT DEVELOPMENT
PROJECT LAUNCHING DINNER
SYDNEY, NSV# 22 JULY, 1968
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr John Gorton
Mr Presiding Chairman, Mrs Dixon, Mr Headmaster, Member of Parliament,
Ladies and Gentlemen: It is extremely pleasant for me to have the opportunity to talk
tonight to a number of people who, for the most part, are directly
involved with Shore or, in the case of the female population present,
indirectly involved with Shore. The ladies, no doubt, have been regaled
with anecdotes of what happened when their husbands were at Shore. I
am going to add to some of those anecdotes, if you will forgive me,
because I am really a ring-in in a way.
Two or three years at a fairly early age, I suppose, is not
the same as staying for the whole of one's education'at the one institution,
but nevertheless, those two or three years left a number of indelible
impre. ssions upon me. As Tim Halstead and some of those others who
were with me in the old observatory, which was known as Robson House,
will bear out, those were days which one remembers.
I started as a boy, and that was wonderful, and then as
a weeldy boarder and that was not so bad, and then as a boarder, and I
suppose that was bearable. In those days and this is quite incredible
there was a system under which a housemaster in charge of a house was
paid a certain sum per head per pupil. And anything he could make on
keeping that pupil went into his own pocket, with the result that we were
fed, but I think that on the whole we would have been able to equate ourselves
with " yon Cassius" whom you may remember had a " lean and hungry look".
Tonight I have learnt in the dormitories in this house there
have just been installed carpets is that correct, Mr Headmaster?
Carpets really I don't know what the world is coming to, because my
mind goes back to when very large rats used to run over us every night
I assure you this is quite true:' and being young, and with all the things
that one has when one is young, we managed to buy ourselves these wire
mesh rat traps which we put on the bed. Every now and again somebody
would go " Clonk! I've got one" and we wo aid all rush out and drown it
in the bath and watch the bubbles coming up. This is perfectly true.
That was the way it used to be and I don't think it really did any of us any
harm. But I do remember by contrast between Shore and Geelong Grammar
one strange delicacy concerning Shore, which didn't obta in i~ n the later
schocl to which I went.
When one had somehow or other offended authority in Shore in
those days, they said, " V alk out in front of the class and get chastised"
and they had great canes in those days. They said, " Hold out your hiand"
and they would beat you on your hand. They were much more indelicate in
the later school to which I went. They didn't beat you on your hands at
all, though they beat you just as frequently and just as hard. / 2
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I am sorry that tonight two people that I remember so
well and to whom I owe so much are not here. One is Pat Eldershaw, who
was a housemaster of distinction. He is a man to wthom I owe a great deal.
I am not sure that this wasn't in some way mitigated. You see, he did so
well at teaching me in Lower 4C that I managed to be sort of the top of the
class and was therefore promoted to Upper 4A, and that left a gap which
I didn't understand, and ever since that time, I have never been any good
at academic pursuits at all.
I did go to the Headmaster at the time, Mr Robson.. I was
a very small boy and this was obviously very wrong.... and I said, " I think
you'ye promoted me too far, I don't quite understand this, and he said,
" Take your hands off the desk and stand to attention. You will go where
you are told, so I went where I was told. But they were really, in spite
of these things all of which I said are true.... you didn't believe the rats
but it was true -it did no harm to any single one of us. I am positive of that.
0 The othaer m-an who I am sorry is not here tonight is Bingeye
tBoelSl, owehof ois a vhery alekanb, otakll Quaeennts lansddert whoe, rwnh en hoet first ocam ne dwown
Queenslanders weren't in those days, so on every possible occasion, he used
to take them off and tie the laces together and hang them around his nec.
But he turned into one of the best oarsmen and one of the best boxers and one
of the best house captains, and one of the best citizens that Shore or
Australia has ever had.
There we were in those days, and so many of you who are here
tonight were there with me, when we had education " reading, writing,
' rithmetic, taught with the aid of a hickory stick". And do you remember we
had thirties, the origin of which I never understood until tonight. If you
had somehow or other offended authority, you got one thirty and that didn't
matter you just wrote that in a book. If you did it again, you got two
thirties, and that didn't really matter. Nothing happened. But once you
b got three thirties, you had to go and drill under the sergeant. Do you
remember? On that asphalt place for half an hour. If you got four
thirties, you had to come back on Saturday mornings. I don' t know whether
that still obtains. I hope it does because I think it is a good disciplinary
application. Forty years ago there was a completely different approach to
education from that which we now have. In some ways, I think it was a
little better, because when you did wrong, you got clobbered, and when you
do wrong, you ought to get clobbered. But those days lacked the foresight,
the attempt to understand the individual chpracter and the individual capacities
of the schoolboy and this is now one of those hallmarks of schools such
as Shore, and of our general educational system.
Though I am a little sad I hope the Press won't take this down,
because if they do, it will be misreported though I am a little sad that
discipline and corporal punishment is not as freely. u sed as it was, and
instead people are given lectures which are much harder to take, never theless
the general approach to education mnust be agreed to be greatly improved.
Where, then, do the independent schools and where, then, does a national
as distinct from a state government come into the picture in endeavouring
to foster this improvement? / 3~
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Well, insofar as the independent schools are concerned, I
have no hesitation in saying this that there always has been in Australia
a right for people to choose whether they will, at some sacrifice to them ' selves,
send their children to a school other than those run freely by a government.
And there always ought to be a right for people to malke that choice. It is
a democratic right people ought to be alle to exercise.
Secondly, there is an educational advantage. I do not say
that merit lies in independent schools, or merit lies in government schools.
Quite clearly, as the development of education in Australia has shown, there
is no monopoly of merit either in the independent or in the government school
systems. But I think there would be a danger, if there were to be only one
system in a state or in a nation, that that system might become monolithic, and
because it became monolithic, might become moribund. Therefore, if there
is a chance of a different approach, of a different evaluation, of selecting this
method of education instead of that, then that can only be of benefit both to
the pupils at independent and to the pupils at government. schools. The
systems must interact upon each other, as they do, and the independent
schools must be prepared to take from the government schools the advances
which they have proved, and the government schools are prepared and have
taken from the independent schools the advances they have proved. This
reacts to the benefit of the children and the pupil. So this again is a reason
for the support by governments of independent schools.
I believe that Sir Robert Menzies as Prime Minister, and
if I may s ay so, myself as his first Minister of Education and Science,
and before that as the man to whom he gave the running of Commonwealth
intervention in education have fostered the growth, and the development
not only of independent but of government schools throughout Australia. In
doing this, we were not only motivated by the things I have put before you.
But also by another not insignificant matter, and that is that the economic
cost to the community of maintaining a pupil at an independent school of any
kind is much, much less than the economic cost to the community would be
if all pupils were to go to government schools and all were to be completely
supported by government taxation.
So there was not only a democratic, there was not only an
educational, but there was also an economic reason why schools such as Shore
should be supported and maintained by governments and by those who have
received the benefits of attending such schools and who wish their children
to receive similar benefits.
This is a great school with a great tradition in one State of
a nation, but little less than a fortnight ago, my wife was talking to another
great school in Brisbane, known up there as " Churchie", the Brisbane Church
of England Boys Grammar School. ' There are in Western Australia and
Tasmania and in every State of Australia, schools such as this, schools with
great and long traditions. It is my hope and my belief that those pupils who
attend these schools now will be taught that this country in which they live is
a nation and no longer a collection of six colonies... and that those who
come from Shore next year will in ten years be found working in Queensland,
or Western Australia or South Australia, or wherever it may be; and that
those who come from Brisbane Church of England Grammar School or from
Geelong Grammar School, or wherever, will be found working in New South
Wales because if there is one thing that is needed more than anything
else in this nation today in the situation in which it finds itself, it is the / 4
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fostering of a national and not a colonial and not a state spirit. And I
believe that in schools such as this, and indeed not only in schools such
as this, this is the path of the future. But I air not sure, Sir, that schools
such as this have not led the way towards such a path.
This is another reason, I believe, why the Commonwealth
Government has come into the field of education, come into it not only for
the reasons I have already given you but because it is impossible to leave
such an important, such a significant field to be developed to different levels
in different parts of this nation such as ours. We could not now or in the
future exist if we allowed, for example, in Queensland, the standard of
educat-ion to fall below that in New South Wales or in Victoria, if we allowed
the basic standard of education in any one part of our country to fall below
the basic standard of education in all the rest.
It is necessary for a C-' ommonwealth Government to come in
and see that a child in any part of this nation of ours is enabled to be
provided with the facilities that the children in other parts of the nation have.
This is why there has been so much more involvement in education by
the Commonwealth than has ever occurred before. This is why in the last
three or four years the expenditure has increased three and a half times.
This is why, more importantly, in the last three and a half years or so, there
has been more advice given, more leadership given.
Let us try and get a little bit more agreement as to the
curricula between the various States. Let us try and get a little more
not uniformity, because that is not what is wanted a little more equality
of standards between the various States. Let us try and get to a situation
where a child educated in one State and his parents move to another....
can go to a university in that new State without having to meet special
matriculation requirements. This ultimately must be good for a nation.
I think there are only a-few things more, Mr Presiding
Chairman, I want to say. You will all know that the Commonwealth
Government for long has been interested in the provision of scientific
laboratories and science facilities in schools governmental and independentthroughout
Australia. Indeed, if you haven't received it, you are going to get
another offer of 000 very shortly for your science laboratcry's equipment.
We have heard tonight from a professor of physics, of the technological
requirements of a modern age, and these we can not undervalue, because
if our mterial standard of 1ivigi tpo increase if our capacity to increase the
material standarI of our neigriMus is to incredse, then we must use to the
utmost wivit is discovered by scionce and modern technology.
But I hope that none of us will ever believe that scientific
knowledge and technological knowledge can take the place of proper education,
because with a full and complete knowledge of science, two things are
possible. You can split an atom so that you can diagnose a disease and cure
it where previously it could not bce-diagnosed and cured; or you can split it
so that you can examine the material to be used in building to knaow whether
if it is used that building will stand up under any stress; or you can split it
so that from the isotopes you can discover how better to devel~ op the products
of your land and the products of your industry; or you can split it so that
you can devastate vast areas of land and destroy innumerable populations.
Science offers both those alternatives, 4 * 1
Similarly with technology. You can use it so that you
can the better produce, so that you can with a smaller number of people
and gre-ter machinery, turn out more and more, or you can use it so that
you put your efforts into creating engines df destruction.
Now what is going to decide whether scientific knowledge
is used for the good or the bad? What is go ing to decide whether technological
advances are used to improve the lot of n'll of us and of our neighbours, or
to hold fears ov.-r the head of us an d of our neighbours? Is true education
the study of history because that shows us the problems which men have
had to face throughout the ages in tryiag to organise a society, and how in
one way or another, with this degree of success or that, they have managed
to overcome those problems, and how something which at first seems a
panacea has been tried and has not been successful. Or is true education
a study of religion, because that breaks the shackles of the present and
makes us look to the ultimate goal we all seek, and that has particular
application to a church school. A study of literature, perhaps, because that
shows the dreams and aspirations of the individuals who make up a nation,
half expressed or fully expressed, according to the capacity of the literary
figure one studies And the study of politics, which shows the duty owed
by a citizen to the community in which he lives, the duty not only to receive
from it, but to give to it. These are the aims of true education,
Fully understood, these will see that scientific and
technical knowledge is used for the furtherance of those aims and not for
the destruction which they make possible. Could anything be more impcr tant
than seeking to see that the forces which are now unleashed through science
and technology are through true education properly used? Can there be
any better way of seeing that this true education is provided to one's children
than by giving to schools throughout Australia the capacity to see that in
this way we become a great nation. This, I think, is what this dinner is all
about because here, in a small way, in one school, we can a little advance
the aims I believe we all have for the nation of Australia.