2.8 From core curriculum to student choice: the dawn of market forces

The success of the Philosophy Strike in securing a legitimate place for new knowledge held by non-professors was not the end of the story for the troubled Philosophy department in 1973. On the suggestion of left-wing academic George Molnar and with strong support by students, a move was made to remove a “core” of philosophy courses from the undergraduate curriculum – a process which started before the Philosophy Strike but did not end until after it. Influenced by the student-centred thinking of the period, such as those educational theories that influenced the Free U, Molnar sought to shift the established ownership of knowledge in the Philosophy department.[1]  Molnar’s educational approaches were informed by a sense of disparity between curriculum and the possibilities of knowledge. Molnar opposed university traditions that saw curriculum based on a type of disciplinary doctrine, which new knowledge sought to deepen or at best build upon but which were universally foundational. Such a traditional approach to curriculum reflects a hierarchical understanding of knowledge, requiring a core – an epistemology that is also reflected in the university structure. Knowledge was hierarchical and so, therefore, was the university, which needed authoritarian teaching and assessment practices to protect and impart disciplinary canon. Instead, George Molnar supported an Althusserian philosophy influenced this, in its suggestion that knowledge is produced, uncertain and contextual, and is always ideological.[2]Thus, for him, unfixed knowledge should be expressed in an uncertain curriculum, where students can work towards producing knowledge, rather than learning to emulate academic Masters and to parrot their knowledge. Under Molnar’s scheme, students would choose their areas of study and work and be assessed in groups to tackle especially difficult topics.[3]

As might be expected, Armstrong, Stove and others were vehemently opposed to the position that would abolish the core. Reflecting, as the debate does, conceptions not only about the ownership but also the nature of knowledge, the proposal to abolish the core was eventually the issue that split the Philosophy Department.[4] Some of Armstrong’s opposition to Jacka and Curthoys’ appointment and the innovative character of their course helps explain this. A colleague wrote to Armstrong about the academic content of the feminism course, saying that such young women could not possibly have fully understood the knowledge on which they would need to build to produce such a course:

Who has ever at such a young age made a serious contribution to the understanding of human society? I don’t believe that there are philosophical issues in these fields which do not rest on that sort of understanding.[5]

Armstrong too held the position that core foundational knowledge was the basis of all new philosophical thought, saying strongly that any student who by-passed the core would “be getting an inferior philosophical education”.[6] A core set of understandings was necessary as a foundation on which further knowledge could be built and which would be further enriched by it. Such an epistemology explains the perceived importance of professors as guardians of knowledge and the university hierarchy that supports its protection. Knowledge was hierarchical and so, therefore, was the university. The proposal to abolish the core in philosophy reflected a widespread shift that saw core and canonical knowledge as complicit in the perpetuation of an oppressive oligarchical structure for the control and ownership of knowledge.

David Stove was convinced that this was all a part of a plot to shift the entire curriculum to the political left, which he described as “intellectually feeble”:

“Women’s courses” already exist at Flinders and our GM [George Molnar] is clearly working up to a Tiny Babies course.[7]

Stove’s confidence in student choice was small:

No doubt many more signatures could be got for a petition for students to determine their own results, for example.[8]

But in a department where the character and ownership of knowledge was constantly the subject of debate, Graham Nerlich, who should have been Head of Department had he not been on leave, wrote apologetically to Keith Campbell, who as Acting Head, was enduring all this trouble. Nerlich’s summary was:

A pox on George and a double pox on Armstrong!![9]

Despite the personal and political paranoia at work, the debate over the core enacted the two important perspectives on knowledge that determined the 1970s conflict over who should own it. One is that a core of knowledge is foundational to all new knowledge and discovery is bent on enriching it - requiring academic masters to protect, impart and be available to declare the validity (or otherwise) of any new knowledge. The other that all knowledge is contingent, ideological and political and new knowledge will be produced by those who can best depart from the canon on the basis of individual inquiry and personal discovery. Those best positioned to do this were generally young, for it was in the youth movements of the period that challenges to accepted ideas – new knowledges – were being produced.[10]

They were all wrong. The danger was not in the dominance of the left or the right in the ownership of knowledge, not in the importance of a stable or constructed knowledge. The drive to abolish the core, despite being informed by sophisticated educational philosophies and progressive pedagogies, nevertheless had elements that would lead to a curriculum determined by market forces, positioning students as consumers:

The proponents of compulsion commonly rest their case on various value judgements, for example that the compulsory courses are more intellectually valuable than some of the options which a student, given a greater range of choice, might make.[11]

Just as the Free U had started, the notion of abolishing the core was immediately connected to the consequences of student choice functioning on the curriculum as market forces. By promoting individuality and student choice, the student movement unintentionally planted the seeds of a commodified educational system. Rather than serving singular and inscribing knowledge for the benefit of a ruling class, student movements sought a diverse university system that would produce multiple forms of knowledge as selected by students. Student movements, using the language of democratisation and egalitarianism, inadvertently suggested a knowledge structure in which universities should compete for students’ interests:

The university has … [an] obligation to go out and speak as honestly, persuasively and precisely as it can to prospective members, offer an invitation and not rely on educational conscription.[12]

Similar to “healthy” economic competition, removal of an old public-service attitude to student recruitment, replaced by a competitive structure should also have benefits for (customer) service, according to some of the student polemic:

It must subsequently perform in accordance with the reasonable expectations its offer arouses in students.[13]

The methods of determining curriculum, student discipline procedures, the privilege of contributing to planning and decision-making, admission rights and access to learning, and problematising the centrality of the professor all challenged the certainty of knowledge as an instrument of power and violence, just as Monash students had discussed in the late 1960s. The important remaining issue was felt most keenly by students, as it was the instrument by which knowledge was regulated – examinations.