Books by Craig Campbell

From the maelstrom of the Depression and World War II, from Communist Party membership in the 1930s-1950s, and early attachment to the feminism and peace, Jean Blackburn emerged as a significant public intellectual. Her life work was the attachment of education policy to the causes of social equality and opportunity. She worked with Peter Karmel on the most significant government report framing school policy in the twentieth century, the blue-print for the Australian Schools Commission. Blackburn was the architect of the Disadvantaged Schools Program, which revolutionised the way that public and Catholic schools delivered education to families marked by many disadvantages, including poverty. She was an architect of the Girls, School and Society report of 1976. Jean Blackburn possessed a charismatic presence, never more in evidence than as she worked on senior secondary school reform in Victoria in the 1980s. As a feminist Blackburn bridged the generations. She was a fiercely independent, courageous, creative and effective social reformer and public intellectual.

This study analyzes the comprehensive public high school as both a policy ideal and a social institution by contrasting the development of the public high school in Australia with both the UK and the US. It focuses on such issues as: changing policy approaches to public high schooling, the "e;middle class flight"e; to private schools, how school systems in Australia respond to changes in international education policy, and the tensions between regional, state and national decision-making groups interested in reforming secondary schools policy.