Hemlock at Bexley - The STHS Socratic Society (Paul Feldman)

Teachers Mackie and Henderson arrived at Tech in 68. They were not as cool as Reg Byrne. Mackie was flabby and bearded, wore a cord coat and spoke in an educated voice. Henderson dressed conventionally but seemed lackadaisical.. They came to work together in Henderson’s damaged white car, with newspaper stuck to the side panel.

Both tested boundaries in a way the system did not like.

They would sometimes sit on the ground and talk to boys in the senior playground. Anyone who wanted to talk to them was asked to sit down first.

Henderson played Like a Rolling Stone to his First Form English class, and then told them to write whatever came into their heads. He smiled at the boys, and was passive about disruptive behaviour. It was not long before his sexuality was questioned.

Mackie had studied under the libertarian George Molnar at Sydney University and maintained that Philosophy ‘teaches you how to think’. He started the Socratic Society at STHS as a public speaking and debating forum to promote the ethic of accepting nothing and questioning everything. Questioning the establishment and accepting the need for radical change went down particularly well with us.

The lunchtime meetings were well attended, attracting boys from all years. Speakers and topics included:

John Flaus [bearded, trenchcoated, WEA stalwart] -  Anarchy as a way of life
Ted Noffs – his work with drug addicts
Tom Kistle – the US primaries, as a leadup to the 1968 presidential election
Morris Cohen and Paul Feldman – the Arab Israeli conflict
Geoff Brookes and Brian Cleary – the Vietnam War

Mackie was disappointed when Reg Byrne declined to speak against the education system, before leaving for Sweden.

When Noffs came to the school, there were about 80 people in the audience. His presentation ran overtime and got the predictable cheer. Ray Hau, a Chinese maths teacher, got into an argument with him on his way out, about using drug rehab. to push Chtistianity. Ralphie Satchell, then maths master, appeared and ordered Hau to go to his class. When Noffs got to his car, Bong came out of the Admin block. He looked flustered but managed a warm greeting to Noffs. He said it was a pity you boys didn’t let us now about this, we would have invited Rev. Noffs to the assembly, etc etc.

I think it was the success of the Socratic Society that prompted Bong, perhaps at Haddrill’s instigation, to introduce a public speaking segment at the school assembly. The two presentations I remember from that forum were one by Lance Meng, on conscription, and one by Stephen Riley. Both were received with grim tolerance, except by Fin Cook who leered with distaste at Riley.

It was not surprising that Mackie and Henderson volunteered to produce the main event for the School Concert. What was shocking and deplorable, to me, was their choice of Brigadoon - about as bourgeois as you could get. Mackie said he wanted to do something ‘much more professional than last year’s effort’ [which he hadn’t even seen – it was Reedy River, a musical about striking shearers, directed by Hodge].

At some point later in the year, Booth announced to his Science class that some of the teachers had failed their annual inspections, and made a reference to beards…

At the end of that year, Haddrill arranged to have a drink with his Level One class after the HSC exams, but ‘not at the Bexley Hotel’ [at which M&H were known to drink].  Over drinks, he  confided he had ‘been worried about what they [M&H] were doing to the senior school.’ In similar vein he went on to ask ‘what [we] thought about Reg Byrne as a person’.

Mackie and Henderson were involuntarily transferred to Blacktown High.

Mackie obviously survived the experience, and eventually came ashore on Masturbation Island – a lectureship in Education at the University of Newcastle, where he taught radical education and Marxist social theory and produced ‘Literacy and Revolution. The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire’ . Of Henderson’s fate I know nothing. He might have become an Orange Person, but I’d say he’s a retired public servant.

The Socratic Society was banned in 1969.

What distinguished Mackie from Reg Byrne was that he was a political rebel with a more immediate focus. He wanted to apply new teaching methods to change the way we were taught. As such, he ran less risk of having a sense of futility confirmed, than someone who wanted to change the world political order. He was also around at an excellent time for an educational radical - the start of the 1970s. And he made a great move by going to academia, where he could nourish his ideas in a supportive, less stressful environment.

All of this explains why he was able to stay radical into late middle age, and why in his salad years at Tech, he presented more of a danger than an anarchistic non-conformist like Byrne. The were two things that pissed me off about Mackie's choice of Brigadoon. The first was obvious. The second was that at that time censorship was still in force. The NSW Chief Secretary Eric Willis had just banned America Hurrah, a stage play produced st Sydney's New Theatre, featuring humanoid dolls who did naughty things. The police attended the play and closed the show. I would have applauded Mackie if he had tried to test the STHS boundaries with something daring. But he would have chosen Brigadoon (a) because he thought it was an excellent musical, and there was no incompatibility between being a revolutionary educator and promoting excellence in anything and (b) because he wanted to keep his powder dry for the main event rather than get martyred over a single night of fireworks.