Curios of the week #110

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

Image via AI

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Strolling around The British Museum, I encountered a statue of Ramses II and as it has for many before me, a line from Shelley’s Ozymandias popped into my head: “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair”. Because Ozymandias is a poem about hubris. People build. That’s what we do. And we will continue to build both the physical and the intangible—from buildings to laws, traditions and cultures. But we shouldn’t become too proud of ourselves because it will all crumble into the sand in the end. Which I presume is why we find old objects so mesmerising—almost supernatural. They’re not supposed to be here. And yet, by some accident, they have not crumbled into the sand yet. This is what makes museums magical places.

Assyrian lads hanging around at The British Museum

The magical nature of museums is attested by the fact they’ve been around a long time themselves. Accounts suggest the first known museum was established by Ennigaldi-Nanna, a Babylonian princess, around 530 BC and included artifacts from the most ancient cities of Mesopotamia that, presumably, held as much fascination for Ennigaldi-Nanna as the helmet from Sutton Hoo does for us today.

This is the week Curios went to the museum but there’s still plenty to report.

Gaslighting of the week

There’s an election campaign on in Australia at the moment and Peter Dutton, leader of the centre-right Coalition, has indicated that if his party wins, he will target the ‘woke agenda’ in universities and schools. Sarah Henderson, the Coalition’s education spokesperson, has also hinted at changes to teacher training. The idea is that these initiatives will be linked to federal government funding.

‘Woke’ is a notoriously slippery term. However, if you want to get a sense of what this might mean to those using the term in this context, it’s worth consulting the centre-right newspaper, The Australian. This has recently been running a number of high profile stories about Australian law degree courses where students are required to perform an acknowledgement of country in order to pass a unit or take part in a privilege walk—the latter also being a feature of the Aussie TV show The School That Tried To End Racism. Commentators cite anonymous student sources to allege this kind of activity has run wild and displaced practical training in skills such as how to draw up a contract.

Personally, I am happy to acknowledge country but there’s no way I’d take part in a privilege walk, which I find insulting as a concept. Regardless of my personal opinion, these are both issues that are political in nature and about which people may reasonably disagree. The ‘woke agenda’ seems to involve assuming they are beyond debate and using power structures to ensure compliance.

What are the other issues Dutton and Henderson are alluding to? They may be thinking of transgender participation in women’s sport or history teaching as a sermon on the evils of The West. Some may even wrap environmental ‘alarmism’ up in the ‘woke’ label.

However, to Linda Graham writing on the AARE blog, it’s about trains in Queensland that didn’t meet disability standards or that time when the Victorian government, at its most authoritarian point during COVID, locked down a set of tower blocks without having sufficient translators on hand.

Graham thinks Dutton is copying Donald Trump’s campaign against DEI—Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

What this has to do with schools is baffling but perhaps that’s the giveaway—Graham cannot find benign ‘woke’ or DEI talking points involving education. Instead, we receive instruction in the true meaning of DEI. On equity, Graham quotes the ‘latte-sipping leftie’ political philosopher John Rawls:

“When faced with making a decision without knowing our own position in society, Rawls reckoned we would each want to ensure that the least advantaged members of society are cared for because we might be among them.

You can test this by getting two kids to divide a Mars Bar. The rule is that one divides it, and the other chooses from the results. Nine times out of 10 the divider will try to get the two halves as equal as possible because they don’t want to end up with the smaller bit. Smart, not woke.”

So, there you are. It’s just about being fair. That’s all. Who could be against that?

I think we do have a problem with the politicisation of some aspects of education and Graham’s gaslighting cannot hide this problem. However, I am not convinced the Coalition are well-placed to tackle this. We shall see.

Teaching tool of the week

Adolescence, a show I have not seen, continues to be a magic mirror in which people divine whatever they want. It is bordering on a moral panic in the UK right now.

If you have access to Twitter/X, you can see BBC interviewers berating the leader of the UK’s opposition party for not watching Adolescence. She points out it is fiction, like another show, Casualty. They seem incensed by that—as if the comparison is offensive—and one of them calls it a ‘documentary’: