Kirby ups ante on education: [1 Edition]
Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 31 Aug 2001: 5.
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Abstract
VOCAL High Court judge Michael Kirby has renewed his attack on the federal Government’s education policies, saying Australia is abandoning the goal of providing free, secular and compulsory education to all.
Speaking at a ceremony in Sydney to honour one of the founders of Australia’s public education system, Justice Kirby said all modernAustralian leaders should take their cue from the values of the founding fathers of Federation, to create a society that was participatory, democratic and egalitarian.
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VOCAL High Court judge Michael Kirby has renewed his attack on the federal Government’s education policies, saying Australia is abandoning the goal of providing free, secular and compulsory education to all.
“In recent years, Australia, more than other similar societies … has departed from the goal,” he said.
“I think there has been a trend, that’s shown by the statistics, towards private education. That, of course, is every parent’s and child’s right.
“What we have to ask ourselves is: is this a trend that we want to continue, or should we be improving the public schools?”
Speaking at a ceremony in Sydney to honour one of the founders of Australia’s public education system, Justice Kirby said all modernAustralian leaders should take their cue from the values of the founding fathers of Federation, to create a society that was participatory, democratic and egalitarian.
He said with the bulk of citizens educated in public schools, Australia owed a debt to the founders of public education.
“It became the chief medium for spreading the ideas of egalitarianism and promoting the means by which children, whose parents were not wealthy, could rise to the highest offices in the land,” he said.
In May this year, Justice Kirby provoked attacks from political figures, including the Prime Minister,when he said alarm bells should be ringing over the disproportionate amount of federal government funding given to private schools at the expense of the public system.
Justice Kirby was yesterday attending a ceremony to honour William Wilkins, the first headmaster at the Sydney’s Fort Street Public School where the judge was educated.