Published in Overland Issue 231 Winter 2018 · Uncategorized Introducing winter Overland Jacinda Woodhead What could education be? The neoliberal university – largely privatised, steered by market logic, forcing academic inquiry into vocational strictures – looms large in the Australian imagination and in reality; as documented in our online magazine over the past few months, class sizes swell alongside student fees, academic workloads and vice-chancellor salaries. ‘The academy is not paradise,’ bell hooks writes. ‘But learning is a place where paradise can be created.’ The education we can make right now, in a society so constrained, hook argues, is one of resistance: The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. So what could education be if our transactional notions did not limit the possibilities? If education was not focused on social mobility or securing a respectable position of employment, but if society instead worked toward expanding everyone? The founding vision for Melbourne’s Trades Hall and Literary Institute, as a site of public education for the betterment of workers and their families, is but one historical possibility. Like many of our readers, we believe in a free education for all, but that right is under threat across the world. The authors in these pages outline some of the pressing concerns of the academy in an Antipodean context, in addition to offering ideas for alternative, non-institutional forms of learning and what the ‘repoliticisation’ of education might look like. Fundamentally, education is about democratic participation – the ability to contribute, to question, to explore the self in society. Education can be confronting, of course: it compels us to interrogate, to become more engaged, to take responsibility. And ultimately, education gives us the tools to shape the world. Read the rest of Overland 231 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Jacinda Woodhead Jacinda Woodhead is a former editor of Overland and current law student. More by Jacinda Woodhead › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 21 February 202521 February 2025 · The university Closing the noose: a dispatch from the front line of decasualisation Matthew Taft Across the board, universities have responded to legislation aimed at rectifying this already grim situation by halting casual hiring, cutting courses, expanding class sizes, and increasing the workloads of permanent staff. This is an unintended consequence of the legislation, yes, but given the nefarious history of the university, from systemic wage theft to bad-faith bargaining, hardly a surprising one. 19 February 2025 · Disability The devaluing of disability support Áine Kelly-Costello and Jonathan Craig Over the past couple of decades, disabled people in much of the Western world have often sought, or agreed to, more individualised funding schemes in order to gain greater “choice and control” over the support we receive. But the autonomy, dignity and flexibility we were promised seems constantly under threat or out of reach, largely because of the perception that allowing us such “luxuries” is too expensive.
