Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

The long-running Toben affair is a critical test of Education Department
policy, but as it has unfolded in the papers and the courts, the case has
also come to symbolise a wider battle raging in Australia’s public
education system.
It mirrors a tug of war between the forces of tradition, who want a return
to exams, discipline and the three Rs, and the forces of change who
believe these trends are out of step with egalitarian education initiatives in
the 1990s.
‘Dr Toben is the very embodiment of a basic philosophical clash,’
Professor Lauchlan Chipman, of Woolongong University, says. ‘Here is a
dedicated teacher in the Mr Chips mould who believes in the old ideal of
developing students’ full potential, and an education system which regards
intellectual excellence as some thing to be traded away if the case warrants
it.’ Dr Toben, who holds arts degrees from Melbourne and Wellington
Universities and a PhD from Stuttgart, is a self-confessed conservative.
Dressed for this interview in buttoned blue blazer and tie, he readily
declares his support for no-nonsense teaching.
‘I’m not afraid of students,’ he says. ‘Far from it. Put me in one of the
rougher schools in Melbourne’s western suburbs and I’d soon fix them
up.’ But in his travels over 17 years as a teacher in Australia, West
Germany, New Zealand, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, Dr Toben has
championed one issue above all others: literacy.
At Goroke Consolidated, which he joined in 1983, he carried on the
crusade by teaching Shakespeare to year-nine students, organising spelling
bees and enforcing a rigid literacy program. The school principal
apparently expressed reservations, and some of Dr Toben’s colleagues,
who allegedly treated him as something of an outcast in the staff room,
suggested he abandon Shakespeare. ‘The attitude was, don’t rock the boat,
don’t stress the students,’ Dr Toben recalls. ‘They must fit in, even if they
can’t read or write. Well, I’m sorry, I couldn’t accept that.’
Dr Toben’s stand prompted the school to appoint a ‘support group’ to
observe his teaching methods over four weeks in July 1984. Later in the
year, another panel comprising teacher unions and Education Department
representatives conducted an informal inquiry. The Director-General of
Education, Dr Norman Curry, finally dismissed Dr Toben in February
1985 for ‘incompetence’ but six years on, the victim is convinced he was
singled out for political reasons. ‘If you don’t tie the line, you’re out. I’m
frightened there are a lot of dedicated teachers who are being sidelined
because they are prepared to worry about education.’
Professor Chipman, former president of the Australian Council for
Educational Standards, says there is also a growing rift between teachers of
the ‘Old Left’ who have traditionally championed excellence as a passport
to self-improvement and those of the ‘New Left who believe education
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