Education ‘conservatives’ and The Little Red Schoolbook in 1970s Australia 

Conference Abstract: Australian Historical Association 2023, Melbourne

Helen Proctor, Heather Weaver, Jessica Gerrard, Susan Goodwin

This paper examines ‘conservative’ responses to the 1972 publication in Australia of The Little Red Schoolbook, a version adapted from the provocative Danish 1969 original, and which inspired an intense mix of support and condemnation in contemporary public debate. The paper is based on publications we have collected for a large empirical study of community organising for education reform in the 1970s and 1980s, including newsletters, books and pamphlets produced by individuals and organisations whose politics could be described as either wholly or partly ‘conservative’. We look at how conservative critics with a range of political, religious, social and cultural affiliations deployed the book in their takes on hot topics such as sex education, school ‘discipline’, children’s rights, educational ‘standards’ and social justice and, in focusing on reactions that we characterise as ‘conservative’, we also open up the term and concept for discussion and analysis. We argue that the 1970s-1980s is a key period for understanding the history of present-day conservatism in Australia and internationally—and that the education of school-aged children and young people constituted a crucial battleground for the ideological contests that animated and shaped the political and cultural ‘right’ from the late twentieth to the present.