Exhibition: Czechs and Slovaks in Brodie Helmets

 Greetings from  Czechs and Slovaks in Brodie Helmets, an exhibition at the ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences. The Slovak Ambassador pointed out that with the situation in Ukraine today it is important to learn from history.

Also mentioned was that the EU had a Pacific Strategy. Given events in the Solomon Islands, perhaps Australia should  be exploring this more. 

The exhibition had a personal relevance, as my father was a member of the Australian 2/15th Battalion.

50 years of Computing at ANU: A Long-expected Party

All ANU computing alumni, past staff and friends are invited to dinner, 29 April 2022. Nominations of Alumni laureates, and donations for scholarships, are also being sought. If you don't know anything about computing at ANU, or think you know everything, then check out David Hawking 's book, The History of ANU Computing (free online & I get a mention on page 139).

"Fifty years ago, 260 students enrolled in an introductory course called Computer Science B01. Nowadays, we typically have over 1200 full time students. In between, we grew from a sub-department of the Department of Statistics to our own department (1976), and now a School. Just as they did four and five decades ago, our alumni continue to blaze new trails across disciplines throughout Australia, and around the globe. 

In recent years, our researchers led the global scientific community in the race to identify variants and develop vaccines for COVID19, twice set computational world records opening new frontiers for energy and medicine, and pioneered computer vision software that will improve safety for helicopter rescue missions and allow robots to make decisions about new scenarios much the way a human being does.

Please join us on 29 April for a celebration of early and recent accomplishments, and a discussion of future direction. This is our first opportunity to host a gala event since 2019, and we are working hard to make it a memorable one for you and for the computer science community.

It's not too late to nominate alumni laureates for the occasion — one from each of the past five decades — to help us celebrate this milestone and consider how taking stock of our past accomplishments should inform and inspire future endeavours.

To celebrate the gold anniversary of 50 years of Computing at ANU, we seek to raise a total of $50,000 to provide scholarship support to encourage a more diverse student population, including women, rural and remote populations.

Make a donation

A generous anonymous donor has offered to match gifts over $100 and under $25,000. So if you can’t be with us 29 April, consider sending a donation and be with us in spirit. Donations of $50 or more will earn you a 50 years in Computing T-shirt — the same one given to gala attendees.

Alumni laureates

It's not too late to nominate alumni laureates for the occasion — one from each of the past five decades — to help us celebrate this milestone and consider how taking stock of our past accomplishments should inform and inspire future endeavours.

Please reflect upon your ANU days and nominate someone who can contribute to this conversation in a way that reflects your experience and your outlook. We want and need your input on who should be featured at this milestone event."

ps: Apologies to JRRT for A Long-expected Party. ;-)

Federal Capital University Proposed for Australia in 1910

At the Australian National University's Forum for early-and mid-career teachers and researchers yesterday, one of the speakers* mentioned that proposals for a Federal Capital University went back as far as the 1920s. This is supported by Davis (2013), but a quick web search showed it was actually in 1910 that the Minister responsible for what became Canberra, proposed a university:

Something of the nature of a university that "will lick creation" is promised by the Minister of Home Affairs (Mr. O Malley) at the Federal capital site. "We intend to have a real democratic university and an advanced university," said the Minister in reply to a question yesterday. "In my opinion the universities of Australia should be reconstructed on different lines. This university we are going to establish will be saturated with the same sympathetic spirit as is found in the advanced guard of Christian democracy today, it will cater principally for the people, not for the sons of boodlers."

    From "Federal Capital University", The Advertiser, page 13, 19 October 1910 (Trove Archive). https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5278883/947375

Apart from the reference to "Christian" democracy, much of what the Minister foresaw is still relevant to ANU today. This includes an emphasis on an "advanced university", but one "for the people", not the children of the wealthy ("Boodler" was a derogatory term for a rich person).

* I can't say who said this at the forum, as we were operating under the Chatham House Rule.

Reference

Davis, Glyn. The Australian idea of a university [online]. Meanjin, Vol. 72, No. 3, Spring 2013: 32-48. Availability: <https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=640753171641857;res=IELLCC> ISSN: 0025-6293.

Higher Education Whisperer in Times Higher Education Blog

A couple of weeks ago, Sara Custer, Digital editor of Times Higher Education asked if I would write some comment pieces for their blog, or re-posts from my blog. She suggested my posts on the Ramsey Center for Western Civilization, digital technology for partition rooms, or dispersal of international students across Australia as candidates. I nominated my Ramsey Center post. Today I realized I heard nothing more, so went to look at the THE Blog, where I found: "Can a degree in Western civilisation prepare students for 21st century jobs?", January 16, 2019.

The post elicited some comments (I am surprised there were not more). One comment suggested that India was ruled by classically-trained Oxford graduates. Leaving aside the question as to if they governed well, not all rulers of India were classically educated in Oxford. The last Viceroy of India, Louis Mountbatten, attended naval college, was a Senior Wireless Instructor at the Naval Signals School, and a member of Institution of Electrical Engineers. He did also study English literature at Christ's College Cambridge, but only for two terms. Not all India's colonial rulers had this level of technical training, but they were backed by people who did, and could use advanced technology to suppress rebellion.

A second comment suggested that a degree should teach  how to learn and think critically. I agree, but that does not preclude also teaching skills, and knowledge useful in a specific vocation. Many people have had successful careers outside the area they were trained in, but I would prefer they were trained for some sort of career, rather than none at all.

Ramsay Centre Curriculum in Western Civilisation to be Used at University of Wollongong

Ramsay Centre Signing

The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilization has announced it will provide the University of Wollongong (UoW) with $50M over 8 years to fund a BA in "Western Civilization". UoW is the first university the Center has reached an agreement with. I was at UoW a few weeks ago, looking at their excellent education, and research facilities, but that was in the field of engineering. UoW is less well known for arts, and it is not clear that the Center's curriculum, or its teaching methods, will be of benefit to the university, its students, or western civilization.

Arts is not my area of expertise, but I was curious as to what a degree in "Western Civilization" would involve, and what career this would equip the graduate for. The center helpfully provides an Indicative Curriculum for a BA Western Civilization, described as a "... integrated degree programs focused on seminal texts of the Western tradition". 

The educational technique mandated by the Ramsay Centre is groups of 6 to 8 students, instructed face-to-face. However, this format is unlikely to provide the most effective student learning. This will also prevent students who can't get to the campus often, or at all, from studying, and also severely limit the number of students who can study. While the Ramsay Centre is covering the cost of the tuition, there is still an opportunity cost for the student, who will be unable to progress as well as they could have otherwise. The Center might consider allowing blended, and online form of tuition, which would allow many more students, and a diverse range of students, to study.

The Center provides a brief explanation of how such an education could be useful. This asserts that entry and mid-level jobs will be replaced by automation, and the remaining workers will need continual on-the-job training. As a result, the Center suggests businesses will need interdisciplinary "innovators" with good communication skills.

While I agree that graduates will need good interdisciplinary, communication and innovation skills, it does not follow that this can be best obtained (or obtained at all), from a study of the history of Western literature and music. Also, I suggest the automation of entry-level technical and professional jobs is not a reason for abandoning technical education, but for more advanced technical education.

This is not to say BAs have no place in the 21st century. As the Center points out, their curriculum leaves room for other studies. UoW already offers BA majors in vocationally relevant areas, which would help make up for the limitations in the Center's curriculum, and teaching technique.

There may be some students who have an interest in western literature and music, who would welcome this curriculum. However, those students should be cautioned that, on its own, the Center's curriculum will result in very limited career prospects, and not make them much more employable in the 21st Century than a high school graduate. Recent high school graduates, who studied the Australian Digital Technologies Curriculum, will be better qualified for today's jobs, than through the Center's curriculum.

Our community needs a few specialists in the great books, but very few, who will become academics and teachers. The majority of students, should instead enroll in a program which leads to a career outside academia. They should, of course, balance their technical education, with some broad cultural knowledge, communication, and team skills. Students may also undertake studies in innovation, and I suggest should learn how to undertake lifelong learning. However, this can be accommodated within a professional degree.

Globe of the ancient world,
Istanbul

The Center's curriculum reminds me of the Istanbul Museum of The History of Science & Technology in Islam. This has wonderful displays of carefully preserved examples of Islamic scientific machines, and instruments. However, these are of historical interest only. The Museum makes a case for Islamic scholars influencing the modem world, but they are not part of the modern world. Similarly, the Ramsay Center makes the case that the modern world owes much to great works of the past. However, while history can inform the modern world, it has a limited role in shaping the future.

Taking an example from the Center's curriculum, learning how ancient Athenian democracy worked can inform today's debates on democracy. However, this will not protect a modern democracy from attacks conducted via social media. Such attacks are being mounted by scientists and engineers with advanced technical skills employed by nation-states. Someone with the Ramsay Center's education would be as useful defending western civilization in the 21st century, as a classical education was to military officers of the early 20th century on horseback facing a mechanized army.

History of Australian Computing Book Launch, Canberra, 9 October

The book "A Vision Splendid: The History of Australian Computing" by Graeme Philipson, will be launched by the Australian Computer Society (ACS), at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, 5:15pm, 9 October (please RSVP).
Some of Graeme's research for the book was posted to the ACS website in a series of "ACS Heritage Project" articles. I was delighted to be able to point Graeme to computer pioneer David Hartley, who I worked for briefly in Brisbane.

"Australia has a long and illustrious computing history. Trevor Pearcey’s Mark 1, known as CSIRAC, dates from 1947 was one of the first electronic computers in the world. There followed a range of other remarkable achievements, from remarkable people.

But Australia’s computing history is not well-known. This book is the first time it has been documented from the beginning. There have been corporate histories, and academic studies of various aspects of the industry, and a great many reminiscences. But they have never previously been brought together in a comprehensive history."

ps: John Bennett, features prominently in Australia's computer history and edited the ACS's previous history: "Computing in Australia : the development of a profession" (1994). In 1996, I was in the UK as President of the ACS to meet my BCS counterpart, I stopped off in Cambridge and handed Professor Robin Milner, Head of the Cambridge University Computer Lab a copy of the ACS history. He looked at the cover and said "Young John Bennett!". John had been a student at the university, building the EDSAC computer in the 1950s.