Years ago, when I was a junior reporter, a kind editor allowed me to write my first ever opinion piece. This was back in the 20th century and the smart managers knew if they wanted to broaden the reading audience they needed to publish people who were not old white men.
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Not that there's anything wrong with old white men. I'm married to one and he's an angel.
But among the very first pieces I wrote was a column attempting to reclaim the phrase "political correctness", which had been seized by the right to undermine any useful social change. That lot wasn't much interested in equity.
Here I am some 40 years later and I'm imploring you to stop using the word "woke" in the sense that cultural warriors use it: as if being awake to injustice is somehow a bad thing.
To do that, I'm going to take you on a linguistic journey across three contemporary examples: the Australian cricket team (go Patty and friends!); former ACT senator Zed Seselja and, surprisingly, new "research" on teaching degrees in this country.
First, a little background. Monash University linguist Kate Burridge says woke was originally the past participle of wake, meaning to no longer be asleep. But what happened next? In the '60s, she said, it began to be used to signify those who were alert to injustice. And then of course appropriated by people who sneered at those beliefs.
"The move from stamp of approval to slogan of contempt is unavoidable," she says.
And she explains linguists have adapted Gresham's Law, which says bad money drives out good. Now it's this: "Gresham's law of semantic change: bad meanings drive out good."
Speaking of good. How good was the cricket? For some reason, I'm a fan. And for months - or is it forever - the folks at News Corp have attacked Pat Cummins for being too woke. I'm all for privilged white men being woke. Makes a cool change. But the Newsies do not like it one little bit. They quoted bumbling proBrexiteer Nigel Farage attacking our cricket champ. They allowed Maurice Newman (in my view the least good of any of the former chairs of the ABC and believe me, he has tough competition) to say Cummins' wokeness was destroying the financial viability of cricket. And a host of other fourth-rate columnists issuing their Cummins take-downs. And now they've had their Cummuppence (sorry).
Similarly, Zed Seselja (remember, the senator Canberrans shafted comprehensively at the last election in favour of independent David Pocock) is trying to mount a comeback by moving to regional NSW (haha, they love Andrew Constance there, so no way that's going to happen). Anyhow, his gambit is to oppose immigration numbers, cancel culture, and "the woke indoctrination of our kids".
Anyhow, The Canberra Times' adorable Steve Evans discovered voters in NSW were wide awake to Seselja's multiple derangements. Don't think using the word "woke" will ever endear him to Liberal Party preselectors who are determined to reclaim the middle ground with voters. Extremists are not on the agenda.
MORE JENNA PRICE:
Research with an agenda
Speaking of the agenda, here's what happens when an organisation with an agenda pretends to do serious research. The people at the Institute of Public Affairs released a report into the state of teacher education in this country. They see Jason Clare as vulnerable to pressure - and I think he is. The federal government's Teacher Education Expert Panel came up with a report that refused to properly recognise the pressure on teachers and did the only thing that would be cost neutral for itself - recommend changes to teacher education degrees. As opposed to pay and conditions.
So I asked Barney Dalgarno, dean of education at the University of Canberra, to review the IPA's report. Now Dalgarno is a considered person and I've tried to get him to be critical of various things in the past. Failed dismally.
But he was shocked at the apparent sloppiness of the report. In the IPA's attempt to smear everything it doesn't like as "woke" - this time teacher education degrees across the country - it includes three University of Canberra education subjects that aren't even core units in a teaching degree. It is not possible, Dalgarno says, to even figure out what was counted in the research and what wasn't.
Did the report count every unit offered by education faculties instead of checking which ones were actual units in actual teaching degrees? Such a good question. The report claims that fewer than one-in-10 teaching subjects are about literacy and numeracy - which it would if you lumped in all the subjects taught in across primary and secondary teaching degrees.
How could you imagine - for even one minute - that someone studying to be a secondary science, maths, PE or technology teacher would spend any time at all on the early teaching of reading. Or that the young person signed up to do secondary English teaching would have to do a mathematics teaching subject?
So let's just look at the 30 units in the University of Canberra's Bachelor of Primary Education while we have the dean right here. Students have to do eight units on evidence-based literacy and numeracy teaching and two units on the social policy context of education and the social diversity of students. Poor old IPA. Always hating on diversity and inclusion because it's "woke". And now I'm wondering whether I should just redo the IPA's project as a fact-checker?
It should wake up to itself.
- Jenna Price is a regular columnist and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
Jenna Price is a Canberra Times columnist and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
Jenna Price is a Canberra Times columnist and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
