The Forgotten Menzies: The World Picture of Australia's Longest-Serving Prime Minister by Greg Melleuish & Stephen Chavura

Author:Greg Melleuish & Stephen Chavura [Melleuish, Greg & Chavura, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General, history, Australia & New Zealand, political science, World, Australian & Oceanian
ISBN: 9780522877687
Google: GvISzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Published: 2021-11-15T00:18:40.901524+00:00

5

EDUCATING FOR SPIRIT

The broad problem, of which all these matters that I have mentioned are merely aspects, is the problem of education for citizenship … The greatest failure in the world in my lifetime … has not been the failure in mechanical capacity or manual capacity half as much as it has been the failure of the human spirit.

Speech by the Rt Hon R.G. Menzies KC, MP on Education,30 July 1945

There are two key periods in the history of the government’s role in the development of education in Australia. The first ranges from the early 1860s to the early 1880s and was concerned with the establishment of a system of state schools at an elementary, or primary, level in each of the colonies.1 Schools were to be run by the state, attendance compulsory and the instruction secular, although what was meant by ‘secular’ varied from colony to colony.2 Most importantly, state funding was withdrawn from all denominational schools, which meant that those denominations that sought to provide an education that included religion had to find the means to support those schools. In particular this meant the Catholic Church, which refused to countenance secular education as it was defined in state schools. They were aided in their efforts by a large number of vocations by young men and especially young women, who joined the various teaching orders, thereby making the Catholic school system viable. A Herculean feat maintained for around a hundred years.

It can be said that the creation of a set of state schools in each of the colonies was one of the great achievements of colonial Australia, matched only by the building of the railways in each colony. The establishment of a school system was one of the first major administrative achievements of Australia. The one great failing was its inability to accommodate Catholic Australians. If the periods from the 1860s to the 1880s was the first heroic age of Australian education, it must be said that the 1950s and 1960s was the second.3 If it was Henry Parkes who placed his stamp on the first period, it was Sir Robert Menzies who did the same for the second.

When Menzies re-established the Liberal Party in 1944, he was also, in a real sense, re-establishing liberalism in Australia. Of greatest significance is the fact that he was doing so at the national level. The key issue is what sort of liberalism and, more importantly, what sort of individual did he have in mind? Two things stand out. The first is that Menzies’ liberalism and his understanding of the individual had been informed not only by cultural puritanism but also by philosophical idealism—itself shaped by the cultural puritanism of the nineteenth century. His ideal individual combined a sense of independence with a strong notion of duty and responsibility.

The second is that Menzies’ liberalism was closely tied to his educational ideals and his understanding that education was a primary means through which an individual developed his or her individuality, or personality. Menzies

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