This is not a drill, stupid

Would you describe somebody who exits a burning building as exercising a "choice" to leave? When sirens sound and you're told you must evacuate to save yourself and your children, does there exist a rational decision to remain, or head for the stairs?

The notion is absurd. Yet a range of politicians and media commentators who have gleefully spent the last 20 years torching the reputation and standing of Australia's public schools have lately described the apparent exodus of families to private education as evidence of coolly rational choice in a free market. Or could it be that some people have been shouting "fire!" in a crowded classroom?

Such is the situation lamented by Chris Bonnor and Jane Caro's new book, The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education (UNSW Press). Drawing on their combined experiences as a long-time public school principal and convenor of Priority Public respectively, Bonnor and Caro make a bid to douse the flames by pointing out the flaws in the position of those who habitually run down public schools and teachers.

The Stupid Country presents an up-to-date and accessible primer for parents and other community stakeholders on the full range of issues that are current in Australian education. From school choice to academic standards and the culture wars, from school fees to funding, vouchers, league tables and the role of public education in our democratic society, the authors canvass the issues from a stance that is supportive of public education without indulging in unwarranted attacks on other school systems.

Those already familiar with current educational debates in Australia are unlikely to discover new material here, however even for education professionals and political observers the book will serve as a plain-speaking round-up of where we now find ourselves. Rather than relying on academic tomes, Bonnor and Caro make lively use of a range of public sources that have tracked the debates, to which they have added the perspective of their own experiences.

One needn't agree with the authors' dire predictions for the health of our common wealth under a declining public school system to acknowledge the importance of the question and the need to fully examine the issues.

Indeed, one strength of the book is that Bonnor and Caro observe the courtesy of allowing readers to draw their own conclusions, which is more than many commentators today seem capable of doing.

The final chapters canvass a range of measures that could be taken to improve school governance, strengthen enrolments and secure resources for our far-flung communities without breathless advocacy for a single "silver bullet" or a return to previous models that have outlived their usefulness. In this sense, the book serves to showcase the best of modern teaching practices, in which students are invited to consider the evidence and form their own response, in contrast to the from-the-pulpit harangue lately favoured by education ideologues.

Perhaps the most engaging aspect of The Stupid Country is its scrutiny of the many contradictions that misdirect so many people's thinking on education issues, from our prime minister down. For example, our school system is both deregulated yet heavily subsidised by government, all in the name of the free-market ideal of choice. And the very same commentators who insist that there has been a decline in education standards over the last 30 years - concurrent with the rise of school choice - continue to prescribe more "choice" as being the means to improve public school standards.

Bonnor and Caro also remind us that the distinction between "public" and "private" schools is far less clear than it once was, since all Australian schools receive government funding, teach from a government-mandated curriculum and must submit to ongoing government checks to continue operating.

So-called private schools now receive between 40-80 per cent of their operating funds from a combination of Federal and State government grants, and many public schools rely on additional operational funds in the form of private sponsorship or donations from well-heeled Parents and Citizens' Associations.

The Stupid Country also reserves a few buckets of water for the torch-wielding vandals currently active in the education debate, who they describe as having "a surplus of ideology and a deficit of sound evidence".

For while editors sell newspapers and controversialists sell books based on conflict and crisis, the reality is that the industrial and policy landscape of today is far more harmonious than in previous decades that were riven by sectarianism and disputation.

For example, in New South Wales legislation has established a truly universal school Council under the Institute of Teachers, comprising representatives of public schools, the Department of Education, Catholic schools, Independent schools, the Teachers' Federation, the Independent Education Union, the Board of Studies and parents' groups. Such a body is far better able to produce sound standards and policies that can be implemented by the whole profession and supported by the community, than could any scheme cooked up by fiat in a minister's office, or by a columnist with an axe to grind.

The authors even favourably cite the federal funding model of Canada, where multiple levels of government manage to co-operatively fund schools - but one level of government agrees to "keep out of the way" in operations. Australia is yet to master this knack of multi-level co-operation.

One clear but controversial warning from the book is the authors' belief that our democratic values will weaken and eventually collapse without the support of an all-inclusive and well-resourced public school system. They are certainly in eminent company with this view, such as Geoffrey Robertson's address to the 2006 Cornerstones conference on public education:

Public education should compete effectively in the parental market place. Not only is it free, it has the great advantage of secularity. In a world where religion is becoming the greatest threat to rationality, surely secular learning should be regarded as a plus. Not to mention diversity, the value of children and teenagers mixing with a wider variety of fellow human beings from different social classes, different ethnic groups and levels of advantage and performance. And the virtue of locality ... the saving of so much time on trains and buses. That doesn't seem to count with too many of today's parents.
(Robertson, 2006, Cornerstones conference paper)

Although the intensity of Bonner and Caro's belief is clear, I doubt whether their thesis will alter anybody's preconceptions about such questions. Thus if their aim was to change minds, it is difficult to regard The Stupid Country as a success.

However, if The Stupid Country can tell us anything new about the question of school "choice", it is that we do have more choices than to exit a burning building. We can choose to put out the fire. We can fireproof the building. And we can deactivate the false alarms.

And if that awareness is all the book manages to achieve, it will have done us all a great service.