By Greg Adamson
In the last three decades, Australian secondary students have stood up for their rights time after time. In many, probably most cases, secondary student activists in Resistance have been among their leaders. In every case, charges of "manipulation" have been made against the students. Conservative newspaper and radio commentators usually head the anti-student forces, but Liberal and Labor party politicians are rarely far behind.
As the Catholic Church once debated whether women had souls, the press discusses the pros and cons of considering "school children" human. To quote Sydney's Daily Telegraph from 1972, "What these militant Billy Bunters and playground radicals don't seem to grasp is that they are being led by the nose by a handful of extremist political groups".
The focus of the press anger in that case was a Resistance-initiated national secondary student strike on September 20, 1972. The Daily Telegraph raved on: "The vast majority of sensible students will ignore them. The others are being solemnly told the strike will promote 'greater student rights, freedom of expression, an end to arbitrary punishment and educational discrimination'. Any student who believes that will believe anything. But that's just the trouble. They do!"
This was a period of secondary student protest around the world. In France in February 1971, more than 10,000 secondary students defied government bans and demonstrated successfully for the release of a fellow student victimised by police. In October 1971, 10,000 school students protested in Vancouver, Canada, against the Amchitka atomic bomb test.
London had protests against corporal punishment in 1972. In Malagasy, secondary students were a major component of student and worker demonstrations against French domination. In Australia, secondary students took part in anti-Vietnam War actions around the country.
In Sydney, the central role in the anti-war movement was played by Resistance. Formed in 1967, originally from activists at Sydney University, Resistance was able to grow beyond the campuses partly because of the support it gave to secondary student activists.
One early event was a Resistance-organised secondary student teach-in on the Vietnam War in July 1968. This drew 400 people, overwhelmingly secondary students.
The Resistance activists began publishing Student Underground. The first issue appeared in September 1968, and announced: "This news sheet ... is an attempt to make students realise that there is another attitude to the war besides that of the government and their great and powerful friends, that some people, including high school students, believe that thousands of innocent people are being killed pointlessly, in a senseless and totally unjustifiable war."
This first issue advertised an anti-war rally, including a march to the US consulate, followed by leafleting of US and Australian service personnel in Kings Cross. Around 2000 people participated in that action, half of them secondary students.
A 1969 issue of Student Underground pointed out that, "To change the education system, the society which has created it must also be changed, since school is an important tool in creating the apathy that exists in Australian society ... We, in the Student Underground Movement, intend to focus attention on this society in order to change it, and with it the abhorrent symptoms such as the Vietnam war, social injustice and the education system."
Education restructuring
Since the 1950s, major changes have occurred in secondary education. A report into the NSW education system completed in 1956 notes that, of secondary students enrolled in 1952, only 16% reached the final year. In 1992, the figure was 77%. The length of school courses generally increased also (for example, from five to six years in NSW in the early 1970s).
The effect of these changes has been to subject 17 and 18 year-old students to restrictions originally designed for 14 year-olds. To quote one cartoon, "The rules are simple: DON'T". The effect of this is hardest on 13 to 15 year-olds, awakening to the reality of school life and trapped by the prospect of several more years of it.
By 1971, protest within schools across Australia was reaching mass proportions. Strikes, walkouts, playground demonstrations and other actions were taking place in all cities. They often focused on poor conditions (bad lighting, no heating, leaking roofs, etc.), or some other local issue, such as the transfer of a teacher.
Blacktown High, a working-class school in Sydney's western suburbs with a strong Resistance presence, was an interesting example. The school had 3000 students (in two segregated halves), most of whom left in Year 10. In late 1971, repeated class stoppages took place around the issues of crowding and other conditions. These involved year 8 to year 11 students in a situation approaching a "rolling stoppage".
This situation continued into 1972, with numerous strikes in individual schools throughout Australia. Reports were appearing in the media every few weeks.
On April 19, 1972, striking students from University High in Melbourne held a city demonstration of 500 students. They appealed to the Victorian Secondary Students Union (VSSU) to organise solidarity actions in other schools.
A meeting was held between Education Action Group students from University High and the VSSU. At this meeting, the most active 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the VSSU, with the support of the EAG, counterposed direct action of students to the existing passivity of the VSSU. The EAG and the VSSU jointly projected an all-day student strike on May 31.
Despite education department threats that participants would not be allowed to sit for forthcoming exams, the strike and march were a major success, with up to 3000 students marching.
Meeting a few weeks later in June, the Resistance national council adopted a report which called for a national student strike, the first ever nationally coordinated secondary student protest.
In each state, preparatory activity was organised. Press releases, badges and publicity leaflets were produced. Endorsements were sought and received from the tertiary Australian Union of Students, individual trade unions in Victoria, tertiary student unions (the student councils at the University of NSW and Macquarie University in Sydney both contributed $50), Young Labor Associations, and many individual leaders of secondary student unions.
The demands listed on the main Sydney leaflet publicising the strike were: freedom of appearance for all students; freedom of expression; no corporal punishment, complete listing of all school rules; end to all segregation in schools; more finance for state education, more teachers; and equalisation of education opportunities.
The September 4 National Times' report on the preparations focused on one of the organisers and was headed "Marxist at 13, and spreading the message: The Left invades the playgrounds".
Among the most vehemently hostile coverage leading up to the national day was that of Sydney's Sunday Telegraph. The September 17 edition featured a full-page report, including photos of coordinators in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra under the heading "These are the ringleaders". All four were Resistance members.
1972 national student strike
On September 20, for the first time in Australian history, tens of thousands of secondary students took direct action for their rights. Actions included strikes, school walkouts, meetings in schools and rallies after school.
The exact number will never be known, because most took place at the schools and education departments in most states gave principals the power to take whatever action they thought necessary to stop students from participating.
The experience of a teacher from the NSW town of Bathurst was typical: Most students were unwilling to confront the principal's threat of expulsion if they took part in the protests, but "normal school work was impossible" since everyone's mind was on the strike.
Up to 10,000 students took part in actions reported in the media, but this was just a hint of what happened. In Sydney, for example, the thousand students present included participants from more than 100 schools, the majority of schools in Sydney. Based on the petitions signatures collected, the composition of the rally was 7% year 8 students, 25% year 9, 19% year 10, 16% year 11, and 10% year 12.
The Sydney protest assembled at Town Hall and marched to Hyde Park where it was addressed by state parliamentarian George Petersen, black rights activist Gary Foley and secondary students speaking on conditions within their own schools. Several students burned their ties in symbolic protest.
The demonstration then moved to the education department building where a delegation requested to meet the director-general, but was refused entry.
At Penshurst Girls High in Sydney, 400 students demonstrated on school grounds. The demands of the students included liberalisation of school uniform regulations and "no privileges for senior students: equal rights for all".
In some cases, student action was provoked by a particular school principal on the day. At Riverside Girls High in Sydney, for example, after two year 10 students had been prevented from attending the city demonstration, an entire year 8 class walked out in protest and went to the rally.
Five hundred students staged a sit-in at one of two Nowra high schools while at the other, 30 students struck for the day. Strikes were reported at Tumut and Bathurst.
In Canberra, 200 students attended a rally at Parliament House. In Melbourne, 900 students attended the city march from Treasury Gardens to City Square. The decision of the Victorian Secondary Student Union to oppose the national protest created widespread confusion, which reduced the attendance (and subsequently led to the collapse of the VSSU).
At Broadmeadow West Tech in Melbourne, 200 students staged a protest outside their school on the day of the strike. Participants later explained that they couldn't afford to travel into the city.
In Brisbane, 300 students participated in a rally at the Roma Street Forum after a march of 200 from the Botanic Gardens. In Hobart, an after-school rally was attended by 300 in Franklin Square and in Launceston, 200 Kingsmeadow High students protesting against the lack of a school gymnasium marched to Prospect High. There they were joined by 100 students and marched to Launceston's third school, Brooks High, where 400 more students joined the march to Launceston Town Hall for a rally demanding better education conditions.
In Adelaide, 300 students marched and in Perth, 200 students struck to attend a rally at the Supreme Court Gardens.
The response of school administrations varied widely. At MacRobertson Girls High in Melbourne, a meeting of students the day after the strike decided that uniforms would no longer be worn. In response, 40 students including the head prefect, were suspended.
Generally, the threats of discipline beforehand were not carried out, although they were responsible for keeping many people away from the demonstrations.
Every issue is a student issue
The rise of the women's liberation movement at the end of the 1960s was reflected in secondary schools in the early 1970s. This was particularly the case in Sydney, where Resistance enthusiastically took up (in contrast to the movement in Melbourne, led by the Maoist Worker-Student Alliance, which opposed feminism).
Throughout the 1970s, secondary school feminist groups and actions were organised. In 1973, secondary students in Resistance in Melbourne organised picketing of high school beauty contests. The same year in Sydney, a School Women's Liberation Group was set up.
Since the 1960s, many issues have sparked secondary students' interest. Throughout the late 1970s, protests were held in Melbourne against the poor quality of education in working-class suburbs. Action in support of staffing levels took place in a number of states in the late 1980s.
Direct action by more than 1000 students at three Perth schools in 1988 drew the following comment from the previously disinterested state education minister Bob Pearce: "The spectre of students out of control in two or three schools is a real problem for the teachers in the longer term and something I find very worrying."
One subject which remains taboo within schools is that of suicide. Why do so many secondary students kill themselves? Sometimes it is the pressure of exams, other times it is the treatment which students get at school.
The school system deserves full blame for encouraging racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes among many students. In 1972, at Eastwood Boys High in Sydney, a gay student who couldn't bear the anti-homosexual hostility any longer burned himself to death. During that period, Resistance secondary student activists were involved in the development of Australia's gay liberation movement.
Secondary students have repeatedly been at the forefront of anti-nuclear, anti-war and pro-environmental actions. At the 1977 Hiroshima Day demonstration in Melbourne, an estimated 5000 out of a crowd of 25,000 were secondary students. By the early 1980s, tens of thousands of secondary students were joining hundreds of thousands of others in the huge Palm Sunday peace demonstrations.
The protests against the Gulf War in early 1991 were largely composed of secondary students, and the anti-French nuclear testing demonstrations drew thousands of secondary students into significant protests.
Since the 1960s, some conditions have changed for secondary students. These changes have in part been prompted by the requirement of Australian business for a more highly educated working class. But they also reflect the impact of new generations of teachers, many of whom directly experienced the protests of the 1960s and later.
Nevertheless, the existence of a vibrant and effective secondary student protest movement has been extremely important in forcing an actual, if not legal change in the status of secondary students.
Still, old habits die hard and the view of education departments, the media and major party politicians is still that secondary students are "children", not "people".
This was revealed clearly in the case of the "Sex Diary" in 1992 when the federal Labor government decided to ban a Family Planning Association sex education campaign for young people.
Resistance responded by helping to distribute copies of the banned material and then by producing its own version of the Sex Diary. An ensuing media storm prompted 5000 secondary students to buy the Resistance pamphlet.
Sunday Telegraph editor Roy Miller was forced to debate Resistance leader Zanny Begg in the pages of his paper and 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly. Calling on the authority of the establishment political parties, Miller said, "The premier and his wife didn't like it, nor did the prime minister and his wife, and they are family people".
The moral was not lost on students: there was nothing to distinguish the federal Labor and state Liberal leaders on the issue; neither cared about young people's right to know, to make their own choices and to take action to defend those choices. That's where Resistance is different.
[Greg Adamson was national coordinator of the 1972 national secondary student strike. He is the author of 25 Years of Secondary Student Revolt. Contact for copies.]