[Muanet] Fw: Andrew Bolt article used to discipline staff member

[Chris Latham]

I thought members would be interested in this 
 
Chris


	----- Original Message -----
	From: "Robert Austin" <robert.austin at rmit.edu.au>
	To: <rwaustin64 at hotmail.com>
	Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2005 4:19 PM
	Subject: Andrew Bolt article used to discipline staff member
	
	
	PLEASE CIRCULATE!!
	
	Andrew Bolt article used to discipline staff member, whose employment was
	threatened for rescheduling classes in support of anti-VSU National Day of
	Action:
	
	Dear colleagues,
	
	Last week, a staff member in International and Community Studies (with which
	Social Science and Planning is about to merge*.) had his employment
	threatened by the Head of School for rescheduling classes on the day of the
	August 10th National Union of Students National Day of Action to allow
	students to attend an action in support of their student union.
	
	This staff member is on probation, and despite receiving a probation report
	that indicated that his research was "excellent and goes beyond reasonable
	expectation", and that the Head of School commended him on his teaching and
	engagement with students and other universities, his employment was
	threatened due to his behaviour in rescheduling the classes. An article in
	which right-wing polemicist Andrew Bolt named the staff member, Robert
	Austin and RMIT NTEU branch president Jeanette Pierce, was produced in the
	probation meeting as evidence of the lack of collegiality of the
	probationary staff member.
	
	Pasted below is the text of the email sent to NTEU members encouraging them
	to cancel classes or not penalise students for attending the August 10th
	NDA. Robert Austin did not cancel, but instead re-scheduled the classes. The
	aforementioned article attacking Robert and Jeanette came exactly a week
	after an article attacking RMIT academic Dr Robin Goodman, in which RMIT
	staff Professors Tom Nairn and Mary Kalantzis are also derided. Both
	articles are attached below.
	
	It should concern every staff member in RMIT, every union member, and every
	supporter of the important functions and representation provided by student
	unions that this kind of material can be used to effectively discipline a
	staff member - that facilitating student self-activity by rescheduling
	classes to maximise participation in this rally is considered part of an
	attitude problem that needs to be rectified on pain of termination of
	employment.
	
	Please email your support for Robert to RMIT NTEU branch president, Jeanette
	Pierce, (Jeanette.Pierce at rmit.edu.au) Student Union president Sridaran
	Vijayakumar and myself, Liz Thompson, and please email the Vice Chancellor,
	Margaret Gardner, at vc at rmit.edu.au, in?sisting that she act to defend
	Robert's employment from politically-motivated attacks from either in or
	outside the university.
	
	Please email me directly if you wish to offer your support or assistance.
	
	Thanks,
	
	Liz Thompson <x02779 at ems.rmit.edu.au>
	
	Spanish 1 student
	__________________________________________
	
	"Dear members,
	
	August 10th National Day of Action against Voluntary Student Unionism:
	
	On August 10th, TAFE and university students around the country will be
	taking action against Voluntary Student Unionism, legislation that will
	silence student unions and take away the organised political voice of the
	student body. This legislation also threatens the jobs of thousands of union
	members, including those in the NTEU. The NTEU and the National Union of
	Students are asking staff to cancel classes for the afternoon or not
	penalise students for non-attendance on that day, and also to come along to
	the rally in the city starting at 2pm at the State Library. This follows on
	from our EBA reportback and update starting from 12pm, where we will discuss
	the August 10th day of action, our EBA and upcoming events such as Open Day
	and the next student day of action on August 25th.
	
	Members are encouraged to attend the NUS national day of action starting at
	the State Library at 2pm. Students will be meeting in Bowen Street from
	1pm."
	
	Closed doors and minds
	
	17aug05
	
	 SPEAKING of university group-think, I must apologise to RMIT University
	students.
	
	 Outraged by my column last week, many social sciences students have written
	to say I have them all wrong.
	
	Their e-mails typically went like this: "How dare you say we all think alike
	on global warming. Anyway, it's all true and only you fascists won't
	believe. Signed collectively: Jared, Jenny and James."
	
	Well, something like that, honest. Read some of them for yourself on my
	forum.
	
	So I must say sorry.
	
	I should have made even clearer that I don't blame you, dear students, for
	parroting the popular line. It's the teachers, as I thought I'd explained.
	
	Oddly enough, I now have another example of how some RMIT staff seem to me
	to confuse teaching with political preaching.
	
	Last week, the head of the university's branch of the National Tertiary
	Education Union, Jeanette Pierce, sent an email urging staff to ask students
	to protest the Howard Government's plan to scrap compulsory union fees for
	students.
	
	They should "speak to students in (their) classes about the proposed
	legislation and its affects (sic)", she instructed. What, are lectures now
	recruitment sessions for union activists?
	
	At least one lecturer went even further.
	
	Robert Austin, head of the Spanish courses, asked students in emails to join
	last Wednesday's protests, adding none would be penalised for not turning up
	to their regular classes on that day.
	
	In fact, those who did turn up were the ones who seemed penalised.
	
	They found the doors shut and their teacher banned from teaching. They'd
	wasted their time.
	
	The lessons they missed will be rescheduled for those who have free time to
	spare, but a line has been crossed.
	
	It's bad enough that lecturers preach their politics at students who come to
	learn something else.
	
	But to dragoon them into rallies by shutting the doors to their classrooms
	seems to me on the bullying side of persuasion. Can't students choose to
	reject such rallies, and the politics of them, and keep studying instead?
	
	Or are the staff of RMIT now so heavily politicised that none are left to
	say such preaching is heavy-handed?
	
	To dare say so publicly, I mean. After all, academic group-think has its
	victims among the staff as well.
	
	bolta at heraldsun.com.au
	
	Gospel, but no truth
	
	Andrew Bolt
	
	10aug05
	
	AN email to students at RMIT University last week shows again that too many
	teachers have become preachers instead.
	
	The result? The students get the cancerous notion that having the right
	opinions counts for more than having the right facts.
	
	The email was sent to an RMIT student list from the work computer of Dr
	Robin Goodman, postgraduate course co-ordinator of the university's
	environment and planning program.
	
	"Climate change rally, Melbourne -- notify all networks!" it enthused.
	
	"At 3:30 pm on Friday 19 August, we will be gathering on Parliament steps to
	protest the expansion of Hazelwood, Australia's most polluting power station
	(located in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria) and to call for more support of
	renewable energy, and a greater effort at energy efficiency.
	
	"We'll hold windmills (template attached) and sunflowers as symbols of
	renewable energy."
	
	And, Goodman's email went on, these sunflower-carrying protesters would then
	brightly "walk through the city streets . . . talking to the people we meet
	about Hazelwood, climate change and renewable energy".
	
	In fact, "some of us will go to the City Loop train stations and tram stops
	through the city, thanking and encouraging people for taking public
	transport, and spreading the word about Hazelwood further".
	
	They're on my tram? Back off, scary flower people!
	
	Is there something about this green strategy that reminds you of the Hare
	Krishna movement, or some other be-saved cult?
	
	Of course, Goodman is entitled in her free time to pursue her pet causes,
	like any good citizen.
	
	Plenty of her RMIT colleagues do just that already, winning the university a
	right-on reputation among the lip-curl Left. Prof Mary Kalantzis, for
	instance, also head of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, gave a
	famous lecture in which she said "in its fundamental shape" Australia's past
	"is not dissimilar to Nazi Germany's".
	
	Tom Nairn, associate director of RMIT's Globalism Institute, wrote in the
	London Review of Books of the "suicidal depression" he'd found at the
	re-election "by zombies" of the "zombie chieftain John Howard", given "the
	scoundrel character of the Liberal regime".
	
	But Goodman is not quite so free to preach like this when she uses academic
	resources and her academic position to appeal to students taking her social
	science courses.
	
	After all, she is urging those students to demonstrate on one side of a
	highly contentious issue -- and the side that does not have many facts in
	its support. In doing so, she risks seeming to want them to show they not
	only back her "facts", but her opinions. That's not teaching, but preaching.
	
	GOODMAN is asking students to protest the Bracks Government's plan to let
	Victoria's biggest power station start digging up a fresh supply of coal so
	it doesn't have to close in just four years, taking 20 per cent of our
	base-load electricity with it.
	
	Losing Hazelwood would just hurt us hard, especially now that we're already
	short of electricity.
	
	But apparently the issue is simple for Goodman. The coal-fired Hazelwood
	pumps out carbon dioxide, which green groups swear is heating the world to
	hell. To save the Earth, they say, such plants must close.
	
	So much of this is debatable, as I wrote last week. Not all scientists are
	sure man-made gasses are heating up the world, and those who are can't agree
	how hot we'll get and how much we're to blame -- or even whether warming
	would be so bad.
	
	But this much is clear: Hazelwood heats up the world about as much as
	piddling into Bass Strait melts icebergs. You'd shut Hazelwood only if you
	cared more about green values and gestures than science and results.
	
	But, where experts are wise to doubt, Goodman's students seem encouraged to
	be sure. Never mind the facts, children, demonstrate your opinion.
	
	Perhaps I am wrong about this, given some students speak highly of Goodman.
	Indeed, I'm sure she allows students to make up their own minds on the given
	facts, and wouldn't dream of giving them better marks for demonstrating -- 
	even if that may seem to some her unintended message.
	
	But when I emailed her for an explanation of such sort, I received no reply.
	Correction: I got an email from one of her colleagues, Associate Professor
	Trevor Budge, which read simply: "Ask him if he is aware of any rally's
	[sic] disputing and protesting against climate change because you also want
	to send your students along to them." Ho ho.
	
	But this just supports what RMIT's course descriptions suggest: Goodman's
	green part of the university, at least, is more for believers of the gospel,
	than seekers of the truth.
	
	RMIT tells students that its Bachelor of Social Science (Environment) course
	is ideal for "people who are anxious about problems like global warming,
	loss of biodiversity and pollution (and want to) be part of the solution".
	
	Of course, the students won't actually study the science and learn there's
	perhaps little to worry about, after all. In fact, few seem even to want to.
	
	As RMIT concedes: "The course) is chosen by many who wish to study
	environmental issues but not environmental science beyond a basic level of
	understanding necessary for conversing with scientists."
	
	And basic is right. The Year 12 cut-off for such courses -- not only at
	RMIT -- is woefully low, attracting drifters, salvation-seekers and, yes,
	activists already sure of the truth.
	
	Says RMIT: "The majority of the intake has, however, been non-school
	leavers. Some, but not all, of these individuals were previously involved in
	the environmental movement. Several started but did not complete other
	university courses because their hearts were not in them.
	
	"They chose RMIT Environment because they wanted to be on the pathway to
	doing something meaningful with their lives, making a difference, etc."
	
	That difference, by the way, almost always involves them telling someone
	else -- usually the government -- what to do, rather than doing it
	themselves.
	
	Yes, this seems a school for activists -- for those who want to push their
	opinions, using your money, rather than be pushed themselves by the facts.
	
	HOW sadly widespread is this phenomenon, infecting so much of teaching
	today.
	
	Just this year, the head of the NSW English Teachers Association even blamed
	fellow teachers for not preaching well enough to make former students vote
	for Labor instead of the lying Howard Government.
	
	"What does it mean for us and our ability to create a questioning, critical,
	ethical citizenry that that kind of deception is rewarded?" Wayne Sawyer
	stormed.
	
	But do Sawyer and his kind really want what they say? Better ask instead
	what it means that so many teachers seem not to want students willing to
	think for themselves -- and armed with the facts to do it.
	
	
	
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