“Lessons from Untaught Books
One of the strongest memories of my state-school education in Ballarat in the 1960s and 1970s is that it consisted to a large extent of unexpected and unexplained events. At my little five-teacher primary school most teachers stayed only a year or two before leaving for—well, I don’t know where, or why, as not one of their departures was ever announced, let alone explained.
Many of my fellow students were even more transient, some staying only weeks, or even days. Seldom did anyone let us know they were going, or where or why they had gone; they just seemed to disappear, and usually we realised they had gone only after an absence too long to be explained by illness.
It was, I suppose, a useful preparation for dealing with the unexplained in life generally, and for living with uncertainty. It could almost have been a deliberate ploy with this purpose in mind. Take the schools movie. A movie would be shown at a special schools session at the local cinema, and if we were in the…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins