Experimenting with education: spaces of freedom and alternative schooling in the 1970s

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore philosophies of progressive education circulating in Australia in the period immediately following the expansion of secondary schools in the 1960s. It examines the rise of the alternative and community school movement of the 1970s, focusing on initiatives within the Victorian government school sector. It aims to better understand the realisation of progressive education in the design and spatial arrangements of schools, with specific reference to the re-making of school and community relations and new norms of the student-subject of alternative schooling. Design/methodology/approach -It combines historical analysis of educational ideas and reforms, focusing largely on the ideas of practitioners and networks of educators, and is guided by an interest in the importance of school space and place in mediating educational change and aspirations. It draws on published writings and reports from teachers and commentators in the 1970s, publications from the Victorian Department of Education, media discussions, internal and published documentation on specific schools and oral history interviews with former teachers and principals who worked at alternative schools. Findings -It shows the different realisation of radical aims in the set up of two schools, against a backdrop of wider innovations in state education, looking specifically at the imagined effects of re-arranging the physical and symbolic space of schooling. Originality/value -Its value lies in offering the beginnings of a history of 1970s educational progressivism. It brings forward a focus on the spatial dimensions of radical schooling, and moves from characterisation of a mood of change to illuminate the complexities of these ideas in the contrasting ambitions and design of two signature community schools.

Connecting rights and inequality in education: openings for change

“…McLaren (1970, p. 87) argued that making public schools responsible to "the whole community, and not just to those who are academically or technically inclined" would help to diminish utilitarian and competitive tendencies. The idea of community accountability found resonance with wider campaigns for more local and community control over the school curriculum led by teaching unions and the alternative schooling movement of the 1970s (Hannan, 2009;McLeod, 2014;Teese, 2000).…”

“…The historical and contemporary inequality between schools illustrated by this comparison is maintained not just through funding, but through an increasingly conservative curriculum that advantages middle-class students and excludes others. What the table does not capture is the curriculum experimentation that flourished in some inner city, working-class and migrant schools in the 1970s (McLeod, 2014), and which has been wound back as inequality has come to be defined more in terms of standards, gaps and benchmarks rather than the establishment of meaningful connections between students and curriculum.…”

“…Serious consideration of educational rights in relation to inequalities came into focus in Australia in the political context of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, in which new counterpublics began to emerge. Political activism has been connected to progressive educational reform in this era in historical analysis by McLeod (2014) and Campbell and Hayes (2019) and in first-hand accounts (Hannan, 2009). From the early 1980s onwards, the influence of social movements on education policy waned and rights were increasingly separated from the problems of inequality.…”

“…Some of the context on the publication and reception of Rights and Inequality comes from autobiographical notes written by Peter. Beyond this, the paper is based on a close re-reading of Rights and Inequality as a way of drawing attention to subsequent developments, which have been summarised drawing on existing accounts presented in greater complexity and detail elsewhere (see, for example, Campbell & Proctor, 2014;McLeod, 2014).…”

The Margaret Bailey case

“…As American critic Goodman (1971Goodman ( (1964, p. 25) put it, in schools, students "learn that life is inevitably routine, depersonalized, venally graded; that it is best to toe the mark and shut up; that there is no place for spontaneity, open sexuality, free spirit". The views of Goodman and his contemporariesmost notably John Holt, Paulo Freire and Ivan Illichgained a growing following amongst educators and other proponents of alternative schooling in Australia in the late 1960s and early 1970s (McLeod, 2014;Potts, 2007).…”