Chapter 49 from: J.J. Ray (Ed.) "Conservatism as Heresy". Sydney: A.N.Z. Book Co., 1974

[Note: This chapter is to some extent a sequel to Chapter 48]


The Case for Examinations



By F.P. JUST

Until a few decades ago it was a pedagogical truism that, when courses of instruction were given in any field of knowledge, the pupils were examined to see whether they had absorbed the required amount of such knowledge. Pupils and master alike accepted this procedure, whether the pupils were trainee nurses, doctors, pilots or plumbers, or simply primary or secondary schoolchildren. It seemed a reasonable procedure, although everyone knew that it was not perfect, that one could be lucky or unlucky with the choice of questions, or have a bad or a good day in one's attempts to answer them. Nevertheless, except for odd surprises, it was a procedure which rewarded with a high mark or a pass the pupils who were knowledgeable, and awarded a low mark or a fail to those who were ignorant. It even rewarded those who worked as opposed to those who loafed.

All in all, academic justice -- the recognition of merit according to knowledge-seemed to be done, and at the same time an appropriate level of knowledge was maintained in the subject.

It all seemed so simple, and to many, indeed, I believe, to most people it still does seem simple: the most satisfactory procedure in a field in which we all know that infallibility can never be attained although it must always be pursued. It seemed equally self-evident that when secondary pupils were to leave school, whether to go into employment or on to higher studies, public examinations should be held at the end of prescribed courses of study, a procedure which would pursue on a general community scale the same two ends: academic justice and proper academic standards.

But as everywhere in education over the last few decades, the behavioural and social scientists, both professional and amateur, and radical social reformers, have challenged what seemed simple and self-evident. Those of us who have taken examinations for granted now find ourselves called upon to justify our viewpoint in detailed argument, not because we have doubts ourselves, but because we feel that if we do not painstakingly assert the obvious, the most militant section of the Education Establishment will succeed in implementing the absurd.

The chief arguments of those who oppose examinations -- and for clarity's sake I shall be referring henceforth mainly to public examinations, for once these are abolished it will matter little what types of evaluation procedure remain in schools -- derive essentially from their view of education in general, so that the role of examinations must necessarily involve a discussion, however brief, of the role of education.

Let me say right from the beginning that there are many teachers who, whilst still holding a traditional view of education, nevertheless have some doubts as to the value of examinations. It is these teachers, mostly young men and women who have seen examinations deprecated by every Teachers' College and Education Faculty lecturer they have ever met, whom I would like so dearly to persuade that their task, already so arduous in contemporary schools, only remains fruitful and rewarding by virtue of the residual examination structure which persists, whom I would like to 'decondition', in order to spare them some of the worst excesses of the American education scene; for as with practically all our pedagogical innovations, with the abolition of examinations we shall simply be taking one more step along the sorry path already trodden by American High Schools [1].

The opponents of examinations are in general the opponents of the traditional idea that the core of education must be the imparting and acquiring of knowledge, and more specifically of knowledge within the basic disciplines, which for clarity's sake I shall list: mathematics, mother-tongue and its literature, foreign languages, physical and biological sciences, history and geography. At the lower level, these disciplines become basically the three R's, at the upper level they become the disciplines associated with tertiary education. In the secondary school, with which I am primarily concerned in this article, they are essentially as listed.

For some decades now, 'progressive' or 'modern' educationists have spoken of 'child-centred' education, a rather improper term, since from one point of view education has always been child-centred, inasmuch as its aim has always been to inculcate something into the child, and it has always needed children for its existence. But the term is used to characterise the recent resurgence of concentration on developing 'the whole child', on achieving 'self-fulfilment', 'self-realisation', whatever that may mean (see Camus's Caligula) and the term is usually contrasted with 'subject-centred' education. The contrast may perhaps be made clearer by speaking of education centred on the developing of personality, as opposed to education centred on the imparting of knowledge, with personality development playing a subsidiary role, at least in terms of school hours. The sugar-coating for this anti-intellectual pill of 'progressive' educators is sometimes provided by the claim that they are teaching children 'how to think', and they delight in measuring this alleged faculty as much as they shrink from measuring what the children actually know [2]. Hence the proliferation of 'intelligence' and 'aptitude' tests in modern education.

Although the current wave of 'child-centred' education may be said to stem from John Dewey's 'progressive' education which started in America as far back as the twenties, it has reached its peak in Australia in the seventies, when to the voice of 'progressive' educationists calling aloud for the adaptation of the child to society and thinking often of the transformation of society through the child has been added the clamour of educational activists frankly demanding that society should be radically and rapidly changed through education.

Whatever the shades of political opinion of these New Educationists whose voice is dominant in the present strident call for radical curriculum reform, and even for complete transformation or elimination of schools, whether their dream is of a Marxist millenium or a hippiesque Utopia, they are one in their rejection of the imparting of knowledge as the core of education, one in their adoption of the moulding of personality as the main purpose of education [3].

The most rabidly political of these educational reformers wish to indoctrinate and manipulate children, but even the apparently apolitical aspire to create new human psyches which will differ from the allegedly bruised, frustrated, undeveloped personalities which belong to the 'employment fodder' at present being produced by our traditional schools.

And so self-fulfilment, self-realisation, which many of us, insofar as we think the term has any meaning, would believe cannot be achieved without cultivation of intellect, is in fact opposed by all New Educators to intellect, cultivation of the personality is contrasted with acquisition of knowledge. The aim of education has become, when it is not frankly political, alleged individual psychological well-being, interpreted of course according to the ideological bent of the individual teacher. If knowledge counts at all it will not be the basic data of recognised disciplines, but the generalities, some of them extremely contentious, of so-called 'relevant' topics [4].

With their view of education in general, it is of course quite logical that the New Educators should look askance at all forms of examination. If one does not believe in the acquiring of knowledge as the core of education, one will not believe in testing whether knowledge has been acquired. But let us watch one of the modern theorists take this logical step for us, this time in relation to universities (sic!). In a special pamphlet entitled "Abolish Exams" a spokesman for the SRC (Students' Representative Council) Exam Reform Group begins his argument with a quotation from the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in which we see the familiar link with 'relevance' and the individual personality, a link which would transform the university from a seat of learning into a creche for identity-seekers: 'Knowledge and intellectual practice must be made directly relevant to the human need of the troubled person of the twentieth century, and to the social practices of the citizen ... what the university ought to do for the individual is to turn personal troubles and concerns into social issues and rationally open problems.' Then he continues with a qqotation from the "Exam Resisters' Manifesto" which runs: 'We believe that university education in its broadest sense should have as its aim to instil within each individual a capacity for analysis, criticism, creativity and feeling such that he may use these capacities throughout his life in order to develop and fulfil his own self to the limit of his own potential for the benefit of humankind.'

Immediately after this quotation, conspicuous for the absence of any reference to objective knowledge [5], the spokesman says: 'We therefore see any type of formal assessment as irreconcilable with this aim. To speak of the calculation, quantification and measurement of one's personal development is nonsense. It can be measured or felt only by the individual.' Is it being facetious to ask the reader whether for instance he would like to be operated upon by any self-fulfilled individual who feels he is a doctor?

Before we leave the argument that examinations are invalid because they cannot measure self-fulfilment, an argument which of course is seldom formulated as baldly as in the preceding paragraph but which invariably underlies 'progressive' educators' aversion for examinations, let us remember that this aversion is also the corollary of their global rejection of any form of competition among the children they are preparing for their Utopia. Examinations are seen as an extreme form of competition, and competition will have no place in a future society founded on the brotherhood of self-fulfilled man.

It is doubtless the deprecation and depreciation of scholarship by 'progressive' educationists over several decades which have provided the necessary conditioning for the other main arguments used by opponents of examinations, including those who are not ostensibly committed to the New Education in all its other facets.

Entities such as the Australian Council for Educational Research, one of the most constant and clamorous of 'anti-examinists', support the argument that examinations, with their prescribed curricula and syllabuses, remove all 'flexibility and diversity' from secondary schooling, a superficially plausible claim (or verbal formula) which, however, the facts of the situation only allow to be interpreted as a demand -- not very different from that of blatant 'self-fulfilment' educationists -- to go far beyond the present wide range of alternatives available to pupils and reduce the teaching of basic subjects to a level far below what most people would consider proper for a secondary education. Acceptance of this argument, just as much as acceptance of the complete 'self-fulfilment' thesis, would no doubt open the flood-gates to all the 'relevant' subjects, from pollution to sex, which have made a mockery of so much of American education.

One wonders indeed whether one is not making a purely illusory distinction between the New Education extremists and other proponents of the 'freedom of teaching' argument, when one reads the following extract from the Queensland 'Radford' report, a plea for 'freedom' which could well serve as the manifesto of the New Education:

Because the external examination requires that students be prepared for a particular kind of examination on a particular syllabus and at a particular time, it discourages experiment and innovation. It prevents many teachers from developing different and perhaps better ways of presenting their subjects to students. Subject matter could be reorganised to suit differing needs, present subjects could be integrated, and new subjects and new courses could be introduced much more readily if the external examination were not there.

It is not an easy matter for a teacher required to present students for the examination to develop different and perhaps exciting new methods, or to alter the emphasis on the content of his subject, or to spend time on aspects of the subject that will not be examined. Nor is it easy for the school to integrate subjects when there are separate examinations. For example, when there are separate examinations in History, Geography and Social Studies it is difficult for a school to undertake a study of, say, Community Development, in which aspects of all these subjects could be drawn upon; a study of Control of Environment could call upon insight and content drawn from, at least, Science, Economics, and Geography. We have no doubt that given the possibility of making their own assessments, teachers with undoubted talent will use the greater freedom school-based assessment gives them to provide a better education for all their students. We believe that the present system leads to a loss of enthusiasm and of initiative in some young and able teachers.

External examination is not appropriate to activities which schools either undertake or would like to undertake -- for example, craftwork, field studies, school music, drama or physical education. Nor is it possible for an external examination to assess many of the objectives that parents and teachers believe the schools are intended to develop -- for example, acceptable social and moral attitudes, the ability to work independently, or the habit and skills of critical enquiry.

We know that some schools and some teachers, despite the external examination and its requirements, have been able to devote some time to these unexamined objectives and activities. We believe, however, that most schools and teachers would spend more time and effort on working towards such efforts if there were no external examination. We are convinced that this would mean a better education for most children.

Because it emphasises examinable material in a range of subjects, the external examination prevents schools from preparing many students as effectively as they would like to, for their life in society.

('Public Examinations for Queensland Secondary School Students,' Queensland Education Department, 1970).

After reading this single page of the so-called Radford report, with its reference to composite 'relevant' subjects (how does one 'draw upon' basic knowledge of subjects one has not studied?), to creativity, to innovating teachers, to social and not intellectual objectives, how can anyone seriously doubt that Queensland has not only abolished examinations, but at the same time instituted, lock, stock and barrel, the New Education, for if all these aims and activities are to be pursued to such an extent that examinations in basic knowledge would hinder them, then they constitute quite precisely the New Education. So much for this particular expression, at least, of the call for greater freedom in teaching. This page of the Radford report, so 'modern' in Australia, could well have been lifted from any of a dozen 'life-adjustment education' documents of the forties in America.!

Then there is the argument, adopted by Marxist opponents of examinations as well as by apparently less radical, that examinations are instruments of social injustice. Basing their theory on some rather shaky research findingss [6] in which injustice is largely measured by non-entry to university (so that the carpenter son of a carpenter is necessarily a deprived being in relation to the teacher son of a carpenter!), but also on the obvious observation that statistically speaking a bourgeois home is more conducive to scholarship than a proletariat one, they oppose examinations such as the Victorian HSC on the grounds that they favour pupils from middle-class homes.

This view is neatly summarised by the chief research officer of the Australian Council for Educational Research, who in speaking of the advantages of 'aptitude' tests (largely glorified 'intelligence' tests) says: 'The evidence so far, though limited, indicates that aptitude testing does not seem to have the same degree of bias as matriculation (HSC) in favouring children from any particular type of school or family background.' (Melbourne Herald, 9 October, 1972).

One can only admire the frankness of this educationist in revealing how class origin instead of knowledge is to become a criterion for academic qualification, but I cannot share his pleasure in having found a test that has no bias in favour of a good school. I shall refer later to this substitution of someone's idea of social justice for academic justice in the grading of pupils.

There is also the argument, adopted by all opponents of examinations, that there is individual injustice involved in the testing of a year's work, for instance, in a three-hours examination, an argument which no-one would deny has a certain amount of validity but which they tend to vitiate by expounding it as if knowledge were measured on some sort of time-scale, so that three hours could not possibly indicate the quality of the product of hundreds of hours' work.

Finally, there is the argument that examinations impose an intolerable strain on the pupil (see the view of the Victorian Minister for Education) [7]. The research officer just quoted also expresses this view in the article cited, (Herald, 9 October 1972). It must be admitted, let me say in passing, that this argument is no longer as unimportant as it was, now that 'progressive' educationists have managed to protect their pupils from any form of serious assessment until they suddenly find themselves as sensitive late-teenagers doing their first examination at HSC level!

So much then for the main arguments of opponents of examinations. I have incorporated a certain amount of criticism in my survey of these arguments. Some of them, I believe, are self-condemnatory for most people, but they will all be clearly refuted, I trust, in the remainder of this article, in which I shall endeavour to present a strong positive case for the retention of public examinations and the rejection both of internal examinations and of qualification and selection procedures other than tests of acquired knowledge in prescribed fields of study.

May I once more remind the reader that the question of examinations has ramifications throughout the whole field of educational debate, so that I must necessarily argue succinctly; nevertheless, I believe that one can adduce correct principles even in the space available.

This restriction is at its most obvious when one has to posit in a few lines that the main concern of education must be the imparting and acquiring of knowledge, that whatever values teachers may, wittingly or unwittingly, legitimately or illegitimately, inculcate into children, the core of schooling must be the furnishing of the young mind with the store of facts, data, information, which alone will give him the competence and confidence to perform adequately all that he is called upon to do in the world about him. Basically, before specialisation, education must give every young mind the power to communicate (listen, speak, read, write) reasonably well, calculate reasonably well, and see the world with reasonable historical, geographic and scientific perspective.

'Knowledge for its own sake', an ideal propounded two and half millenia ago, is a dictum that most scientists and scholars, and indeed most people, will deem at least worthy of consideration. But there is no need to assert this ideal in order to believe that knowledge at an adequate level is the sine qua non not only of the health of the individual but of the well-being of the nation. An individual's sense of adequacy comes above all from a feeling of being competent in areas of basic knowledge; a nation's very survival may depend on its common store of knowledge or the knowledge of its best trained minds. No society is conceivable, in the near or remote future, without a high level of knowledge, if only on a technical level to provide such things as penicillin and Jumbo jets and anti-pollutants.

A thousand voices have expressed this truism in literature, but may I cite the words of a great English philosopher, A. N. Whitehead, words quoted by the present Federal Minister for Education in a splendid address to Convocation of the University of Melbourne on 7 May 1972: 'In the conditions of modern life, the rule is absolute: the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your will, not all your victories on land and sea, can move back the finger of fate.'

And so, I repeat, for the sake of both the individual and society, education must be chiefly concerned with knowledge. We must dismiss the claims of 'progressive' educationists who wish to concentrate on moulding personalities at the expense of forming intellects or who wish to study 'exciting', 'relevant' topics at the expense of basic disciplines. We must also dismiss the claims of Marxists who proclaim that knowledge is dependent on ideology and who, themselves rigidly governed by dogma, waste pupils' schooldays in intellectually sterile experiments conceived with the ridiculous aim of imparting ideology-free knowledge, as if the answer to seven times four varied according to whether one lived under Hitler, Stalin or Mr Whitlam. (One would have thought that the Lysenko episode would have cured Marxists of this kind of thinking).

All the foregoing is a necessary preamble to any discussion of the role of examinations, because it is quite obvious that the case for testing acquired knowledge rests on the basic assumption that knowledge is the chief commodity in which education deals.

Examinations -- and I mean public examinations of acquired knowledge -- play two main roles in education. The first is to see that academic justice is done and is seen to be done; that is to say, to grade candidates in order of merit according to their attainment within the given field of knowledge or subject. The public nature of the examination is indispensable in order to ensure maximum objective evaluation and ranking, not only as between pupils of the one school, where individual personal considerations may otherwise produce bias, but above all as between schools, where wide variations in standards may otherwise occur.

Internal examinations, regarded by most pupils in most schools as derisory, are inherently unable to play this role, and perpetrate gross infringements of academic justice on individual pupils, whose merit may be enormously inflated because they hold a certificate from an elite school, or enormously deflated because they hold a certificate from a humble High School. Or vice versa, because with schools reputation does not always correspond to reality. No amount of 'moderation' such as it is practised in Queensland can ever do anything other than statistically gloss over individual academic injustices. I submit that no society can tolerate this assessment of pupils by individual teachers in a close relationship with candidates, and that no parent should accept it, for from this academic injustice flow immense intellectual harm to the nation and gross social injustice to the individual.

In relation to the other aspect of public examinations: that they measure acquired knowledge, that is to say actual achievement and not some amateur or professional behavioural scientist's notion of potential, most people will not need the testimony of those of us who have taught under the heinous 'eleven plus' system in England, to reject the idea that children should be assessed and graded according to some nebulous criterion called intelligence, which is supposed to be the index of some equally nebulous criterion called potential, which in turn may or may not be realised in some nebulous future. They will also reject 'aptitude' tests for they have learned that with these they are still being deluded with the psychopedagogue's same old notion of unrealised potential. They will prefer the notion of academic justice, which by definition is based on the criterion of actual knowledge, on the belief that mathematicians should be graded according to their performance in mathematics, physicists according to their performance in physics, linguists according to their performance in languages, etc.

And they will prefer a system whereby a hard-working but not so 'intelligent' child can obtain distinction just as much as or more than a lazy but 'intelligent' one, knowing full well that if a so-called 'intelligent' child is not realising his or her 'potential' by the age of sixteen or seventeen, the chances are that he or she will never overtake the diligent 'plodder'.

Furthermore, I believe, and I have already mentioned this aspect, that most people realise that in our fallible world the three-hour examination, with or without some minor adjuncts, is the least fallible of instruments for dispensing academic justice, that the particular performance of candidates during these three hours is, generally speaking, satisfactorily indicative of their knowledge in the subject, in other words that 'performance' equals 'attainment'. Certainly, there is no conceivable better alternative, except, of course, a series of such examinations, which would hardly be palatable for most pupils [8].

Finally, one must answer the objection that examinations such as HSC perpetuate social injustice in that they favour middle-class candidates. (It may well be found that they favour or disfavour Protestant or Catholic candidates, new rich or old rich, socialist homes or capitalist homes, and even independent schools or State schools, and it will certainly be found that some migrant children are disfavoured, particularly if they cannot speak English, in the same way as I would be if I tried to pass the Lithuanian HSC ). This objection has assumed its most flamboyant and absurd form in the proposal by a Victorian secondary teachers' union that selection for universities should be by ballot (sic!), a proposal which would be comical if, in the present educational climate, it did not have a slight chance of being implemented, thus wreaking untold havoc in scholarship and social well-being.

I submit, and I believe that most people would agree, that such social considerations must never be allowed to interfere with the dispensation of academic justice, that is to say, the recognition of merit by attainment, and are the province, not of examiners, nor even exclusively of educationists, but of broad socio-political decisions made by governments. If indeed social classes are being disadvantaged, it is the governments' task to take whatever measures, some of them pedagogical, are feasible to bring the members of such classes up to academic standard, not in any way to interfere with the examining process [9].

So much then for the first main role of examinations, which is to ensure that trading in the principal commodity of education is fair. The second main role, and if anything it is more important than the first, is to ensure that the quality of this commodity is maintained whilst individual justice is being done, that is to say, that knowledge within schools and thence throughout the community is maintained at an adequate level.

Again internal examinations, no matter what 'monitoring' or 'accediting' systems one may have, are no substitute for public examinations in this role, and again we find them derided by pupils and teachers alike because of the passes they have seen awarded to candidates of abysmal ignorance [10]. By chance I have before me now an analysis of some French results for a dozen schools which shows a pass rate for internal Leaving candidates of about ninety-five per cent whilst the external HSC pass rate for the same classes the following year, i.e. the same pupils less those who had dropped French, is less than sixty per cent.

This role of maintaining quality of scholarship, based essentially on the fact that assessment is in the hands of the best available scholars in the field of knowledge, acting as independent and hence impartial judges of the whole range of candidates, extends far beyond the immediate examination at which candidates below a certain level of attainment are rejected, it bears upon the whole primary and secondary process, stimulating both teachers and pupils to the effort required for adequate achievement. It is no reflection on the conscientiousness and competence of the average teacher to say that no internal evaluation system can replace this motivation from without, for in no other profession is one so completely at the mercy of an inefficient or deviant colleague, or of course recalcitrant children.

This role, it should be noted, can only be played effectively if the examinations are in fact examinations of acquired knowledge in precise fields of study, and not the glorified 'intelligence' tests which ignore the fruits of application and memorisation and neither measure nor promote scholarship [11].

I suggest that the effect of external examinations in this role of maintaining scholarship is such that their abolition would mean the beginning of a rapid decline in the intellectual life of our community. Most countries have realised the importance of this role, and those that have already abolished the equivalent of HSC have found, or I believe, will soon find, that their universities or tertiary colleges have to assume much of the work previously accomplished by secondary schools, that is to say, have registered a pronounced fall in standards. An eminent American professor of History, Arthur Bestor in his book (The Restoration of Learning, New York, 1955) summarises the position in his country thus:

'The retreat from rigorous examinations has become a disastrous rout in American public education. College and university faculties must take the lead in re-establishing comprehensive, essay-type examinations as the basic means of evaluating educational preparation and measuring educational achievement. The obvious place to start is in connection with admission to college, for an alarming decline in the standards of American higher education can be attributed to the gradual abandonment of searching and effective entrance examinations. Professional educationists seem to prefer aptitude tests to examinations that show how much a student knows and what he is capable of doing with his knowledge. But a college needs students who are not merely apt but well trained, if it is to be an institution of higher learning. It requires students who can write the English language clearly and effectively, not merely those with a potentiality for literary expression. It requires students who are prepared to solve mathematical problems, not merely those with a latent talent for mathematical abstraction. It requires students who can sit down and read a book in a foreign language, not merely those who would find it easy to learn a language if they had a chance. It requires students who have fundamental knowledge in history or chemistry, which can be built upon in advanced courses, not merely students who will prove apt at acquiring such knowledge when at last they are introduced to it.

Professional educationists can be expected to object violently to the re-establishment of stringent college entrance examinations.' (pp. 341-342)

The author goes on to say 'that the first two years of college constituted for most students not higher education but secondary-school work.' (p. 346). He then proceeds to argue strenuously the case for 'the development of uniform examinations throughout the public-school system' (p. 353), outlining an examination structure similar to the one which our Australian educationists are about to throw out. But readers should study the whole chapter entitled 'Re-establish Standards through Examinations' of this brilliant and scholarly appraisal of American education, indeed they are recommended to read the whole book.

It is this inevitable decline in standards that makes it desirable, indeed indispensable, to maintain the dual role of HSC as both secondary terminal examination and university entrance examination, whilst not precluding the possibility of having other examinations at lower levels. It will be a sorry day for scholarship if those educationists who complain of the oppressive, restrictive influence of the university on curricula and syllabuses (as if seats of higher learning can be said to oppress and restrict seats of lower learning) have their way, and secondary education is totally divorced from tertiary. Then, not only will universities be forced, as in America, to waste a lot of their time and effort on courses of secondary standard, but the influence of the best trained minds will be removed from the whole field of secondary education, which will find itself completely at the mercy of the pedagogical 'expert'. HSC is the vital link between the university and the schools which ensures the continuity of scholarship and the transmission of discovery throughout our society. We must not allow the pedagogue to cut it [12].

To dispense academic justice, to maintain academic quality. Public examinations are said to have a third role: to predict success in tertiary studies. This, of course, they cannot do any more successfully than common sense would allow us to assume. They record present achievement in particular subjects, they register that a candidate has reached a certain level in particular studies and is therefore to be considered presently qualified to undertake more advanced studies of the same or a similar nature. They do not predicate that such candidate will remain interested in his subject or work hard in his subject, any more than common sense would predicate that an exhaustive knowledge of Latin syntax would protect a student from the ravages of an unhappy love-affair, let alone an addiction to pot.

It would, of course, be disturbing to advocates of the retention of HSC if a better practical predictor of tertiary success were found. So far it has not (indeed HSC is a pretty good predictor when the higher marks are used), but even if it were, I believe it would be wrong to apply it unless it were essentially based on acquired knowledge, for not only would it be contrary to academic justice and harmful to scholarship, but the moment it was applied, secondary school conditions would thereby be so changed that it might no longer be a better predictor! Fortunately, the question is hypothetical and HSC remains the least fallible statistical indicator of how a student is likely to perform at the university.

Let me conclude by redressing any impression I might have created with my emphasis on intellect that I believe intellect to be the be-all and end-all of life, or indeed of education, or that I am advocating that we should all try to be ivory-tower scholars or great scientists, etc. The scholarship I have in mind will be the foundation, naturally, for a minority of such people, but it is essentially that basic knowledge without which no flowering of the personality is possible and which is the inalienable right of every young Australian. It is knowledge which extends, but not necessarily, up to HSC level; not necessarily, or even desirably in many cases, for there are many young people whose personality will flower only if they are not inexorably impelled towards matriculation and tertiary studies. But this is all the more reason for allowing them, whilst the more academic pupils perhaps move directly towards matriculation, to choose to sit for a lower external certificate which they and everyone else will know to be worth something and which will have provided motivation for their middle-school studies.

This is the level of scholarship I have been discussing at a time when everyone knows we are not suffering from a crisis of too much juvenile intellect, when lower and middle school pupils are frequently bored to tears as well as ignorant, when disciplinary troubles are beginning to multiply, for no personality flowers in boredom and ignorance [13] and when, with for instance Victorian HSC passing automatically four candidates out of five in each subject, it is possible for young ignoramuses to reach our universities.

But as so many of us teachers, parents and ordinary citizens know, these ignoramuses will be as sages compared with some of the products of our schools if 'progressive' educationists have their way and abolish the last curb on their aberrations: the HSC examination (or its equivalent in other States).

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NOTES

1. In Queensland, of course, it is too late, and the journey towards academic inferiority and injustice has begun.

2. Another piece of 'progressive' jargon heard in Teachers' Training Colleges, etc., is: 'We teach the child and not the subject', although one would expect from some of the Marxists a Hegelian: 'We teach the child the subject'!

3. This is so even when Marxists pretend that they are trying to impart knowledge without capitalist conditioning; their chief aim is still to create a non-capitalist society.

4. New educators never tire of formulating this opposition between the acquiring of knowledge within traditional disciplines and the changing of young human beings and society, so that one has difficulty in selecting quotations. However, choosing arbitrarily, I may quote a Marxist luminary in an Education Faculty who refers to Victorian pupils as an intellectually-trained proletariat and a revolutionary vanguard (Australian Capitalism, Pelican 1972, pp. 219-247), and who, whilst chiding some of his fellows on their 'happiness-is-all' approach and ostensibly pondering on how to teach without making 'the children subject to the tyranny of social systems, dominated by ideologies or systems of thought' (as if the formula for sulphuric acid or Mendelian heredity depended on ideology), nevertheless refers to the 'professional' teacher, the expert who is a specialist in his subject, as 'a kind of high-class prostitute', because he serves the system (Issues, Journal of T.T.A.V., Aug. 1972, pp. 4-5). Or another Marxist head of a Victorian teachers' union who, when speaking at the inaugural meeting of a Left Education Movement, used even more lapidary formulae, according to the report in the Communist weekly: 'Our aim is to destroy capitalist mis-education'. 'The basic task, to change the very nature of the school system, involves the development of a new set of values that puts humanity and the needs of the human being first.' He then went on to call for 'a genuine alliance between teachers and students' in a typical tirade designed to enlist the help of children in freeing education from 'the repressive nature of the State [bourgeois, capitalist] machine.' (Report in Tribune, 10-16 October 1972, of speech delivered at Melbourne University on 1 October 1972). But even the Victorian Education Department, in its official publication, The Primary School, 1970, in an Introduction in which the word 'change' appears at least ten times in twenty lines, does not hesitate to say: 'Indeed, instead of merely responding to social changes, teachers are in a position to bring about certain changes themselves -- they can become active agents in a continuing process.' If this is not an invitation to indoctrinate minors I do not know what is.

5. One may contrast this definition of the role of the university with that given by a Melbourne surgeon, Mr John Hayward, in Melbourne University Staff News, 14 July 1972: 'The only commodity in which a University deals is knowledge. The functions of a University are to impart knowledge right to its furthest frontiers (teaching) and to try to extend these frontiers (research)... The aims of a University should therefore be excellence in teaching and brilliance in research. These functions and corresponding aims are so simple and fixed that it is hard to see why any time should be wasted discussing them.'

6. For example, Tom Roper, The Myth o f Equality. Education Department, National Union of Australian University Students, 1970, in which failure to follow one's father's occupation and non-entry to university are used as the index of inequality and injustice, the crowning injustice being that sixty per cent of all entries in Who's Who have a tertiary education (sic!) (p. 22). It is not to depreciate the attention that such publications draw to inner-suburban school conditions, etc., to say that this is dubious sociology. See also W. C. Radford, School Leavers in Australia, A.C.E.R., Melbourne, 1962, and S. S. Dunn & P. J. Fensham, A Study of the Choice of Tertiary Education by 5th and 6th Form Males in Victoria, Monash University, Melbourne, 1969.

7. One is entitled to ask just what ideology is behind the official policy of the Victorian Education Department on examinations, as expressed in an interview granted to a Melbourne newspaper by the Minister for Education and his Director-General (Herald, 28 June 1972). Having quoted the general principle, established by the Curriculum Advisory Board, one of which is: 'There is no place for competitive assessment in the secondary school,' they give their respective opinions as follows: 'The Minister made it clear that, like the board, he does not believe in competitive examinations. "I would hope eventually to see the end of the Higher School Certificate examination," he said. There will always be same form of testing necessary. But there are logical objections to one pressure examination at the end of the year-even in sixth form. "I do not believe matriculation is essential. Assignments, oral testing, and regular tests through the year would be preferable." The Director-General is 'anti-examinations' too. 'We have reason to doubt the real educational value of a test which compares one pupil's attainment with that of another or with some arbitrarily chosen 'pass' level. Tests and assessments are better used to indicate a pupil's progress relative to his previous performance. This encourages him to maintain and increase his effort'. The Director-General also believes there is much more to school life than learning facts. "Schools should prepare pupils for life in our society," he said.'

Now I am not for the moment suggesting that either of these educationists is an adherent of the Rousseau-Marx-Dewey-Marcuse ideology behind the New Education, but I am suggesting that amongst the purely academic objections to examinations such as their unfairness, one finds clearly reflected the preoccupation with individual personality and social adaptation and the aversion for competition which belong to current educational orthodoxy, itself largely inspired by this ideology. One is at least entitled to ask how pupils can be prepared without competition for 'life in our society' where there is still, I believe, some competition -- pending the advent of the millenium.

8. The old system of supplementary examinations in February, before the days of university quotas, had much to recommend it, for it allowed candidates not only to improve their knowledge over the holidays, but to have a second chance to ensure that their particualr performance corresponded more exactly to their attainment. Perhaps two two-hour papers in basic subjects, when entry to university was sought, might be preferable to one three-hour.

9. May I remind readers at this point that the moment educators or examiners begin to try to dispense anything other than academic justice as defined, all sorts of arbitrary aberrations will be installed, with amateur or professional behavioural and social scientists quarrelling over such things as whether one should credit the ignorant child of a drunken worker and debit the knowledgeable child of a sober bourgeois, or vice versa, or even whether one should penalise a candidate for going to a good school. The only rational approach to such problems is, for the government to tackle the problem of culture-deprived homes, the problem of educating children from such homes, the problem of providing better teaching in underprivileged areas, etc.; it is not for examiners to deviate from the procedure of grading candidates according to their academic attainment.

10. Few educationists would dispute that American High School Diplomas are merely certificates of attendance. I have evidence that the Victorian internal Leaving Certificate, is not always even this.

11. Until one understands psychopedagogues' aversion for acquired knowledge one cannot help being amazed at their contempt for memory, another native faculty they could well start measuring if they are keen to predict future performance. But memorised facts, the fruits of application, constitute knowledge, so that they are not interested in measuring this faculty, and instead speak disdainfully about knowing something by heart. At least the Radford committee has the grace to admit that its recommended tests are scarcely suitable for, say, linguists, whose knowledge is largely the fruit of that anathema of all 'progressive' educationists: learning by rote.

12. This cut could soon be made in an alarming manner in Victoria, where Teachers' Colleges have just been granted degree-granting powers. The result would then be the complete isolation of the teaching establishment from the university, and the total abandonment of primary and secondary schools to the pedagogue as opposed to the scholar, a frightening prospect whose reality America knows so well and of which the following is a thumb-nail sketch from the book by the American professor of History from which I have already quoted:

One cannot convert a vocation into a profession simply by labelling its particular know-how a 'science' and creating pretentious, instructional programmes therein. Such, however, is precisely the educationists' plan. Courses in pedagogy -- the mere know-how of teaching -- are multiplied, expanded, subdivided, amplified, protracted, inflated, spun out, and padded. The real service that one or two such courses might perform for the prospective teacher is completely lost sight of in the frantic effort to make each petty detail of teaching into a separate course. Absurd though the process may be, it is not purposeless. Only thus can pedagogy command ever more of the time of undergraduates, and only thus can it be piled, layers thick, upon the helpless teachers who return, year after year, to suffocate in summer schools oœ education. The prize in this endurance test is an advanced degree in pedagogy and a vague promise of 'professional' standing.

Classroom teachers have a right to professional standing and to the prestige that goes with it. They will never attain it by plodding along in the educationists' treadmill ...

However lamentable the fact may appear to the educationists, the public will always judge the teaching profession by what its members know about the subjects they profess to teach. (Arthur Bestor, The Restoration of Learning, New York, 1955, p. 271).

If any reader cares to read this book about what was happening to America in 1955, he will have a good insight into what is happening here today, with the normal lag of all our pedagogical imports from the United States. He will see that pupils are just as frustrated and harassed by omnipotent pedagogues as teachers are shown to be in the above extract. To bring the picture painted in this book up to date, however, he must add the violent Marx-Marcusian politicisation of the classroom of the sixties and seventies.

13. See advance press reports (Age and Australian, 12 October 1972) of a comprehensive survey of English secondary and primary schools purporting to establish a link between non-competitive 'progressive' schooling and violence within and without the school.

Chapter 50 from: J.J. Ray (Ed.) "Conservatism as Heresy". Sydney: A.N.Z. Book Co., 1974


Censorship -- a Conservative Viewpoint



By J. H. COURT

Introduction

The strength of the controversy which has surrounded censorship in recent years is such that any conservative comment about it is in danger of being pre-judged as obscurantist, reactionary or misguided. The currency of the word itself has been debased by those who advocate freedom from restraint as the sine qua non of contemporary society. The context of debate has shifted markedly in the last ten years so that new issues have become crucial and old arguments are largely irrelevant: yet the objections to censorship continue as if nothing had changed.

The debate easily deteriorates into disagreement about terms so that the more burning practical issues become obscured. What appears superficially to be a question of where to draw the line, or who shall draw it, fails to reveal that the real pressure is to remove all lines, all decisions and all standards. As a result, some of the more active campaigners who in the past fought against restrictions have found it necessary to move into the other camp.

A. P. Herbert for many years fought for greater literary freedom, and now says that what has been achieved is quite different from what he sought. Similarly, Benjamin Spock (1970) has written:

"For decades I was an uncomprising civil libertarian and scorned the hypocrisy involved in the enforcement of obscenity laws. But recent trends in movies, literature and art toward what I think of as shock obscenity, and the courts' acceptance of it, have made me change my position, . . . particularly in view of other brutalising trends."

Any rational discussion of the present issues must seek to avoid the word censorship itself and seek an alternative, more precise term. Not only has the practice of censorship been widely abused so that its defence becomes clouded by emotional reactions; but also the term means different things to different people. While some apply the term rigorously to refer to pre-publication control, others think of some later intervention by a responsible body. While some see censorship as a political weapon associated either with the extreme left or the extreme right (only to be endorsed as legitimate by whichever extreme one might identify with) others see it as a means of suppressing sexual themes and indicative of emotional hang-ups. Many see censorship as the means whereby the offensive or unacceptable may be removed from public circulation; others are equally concerned by the censorship which arbitrarily excludes or distorts material which should be given free circulation. Whereas the opponents of censorship see it as a repressive force, its advocates claim that it can in practice be a liberating influence.

Clearly when the issues have become so polarised, and the terms of reference so uncertain, there can be no communication among protagonists unless a number of the underlying assumptions involved are made explicit.

A conflict of interests

Before getting away from the word censorship, it is necessary to accept the term while presenting some of the issues which have contributed to conflicting views. Undoubtedly the thinking which has been most influential against censorship has been that inspired by Mill's essay On Liberty (1859). The arguments of many secular humanists, the Civil Liberties movement, and many in the legal profession draw heavily on Mill's rejection of paternalism as a basis for intervention in the affairs of others. Instead of control by the State he emphasised individual freedom of choice to the point of absolute sovereignty of the individual over himself. He saw this personal autonomy not only as highly desirable but even central to the very idea of being truly a person. Any intrusion from without on this personal freedom is therefore in conflict with the philosophical view of man that Mill proposes.

This is not the place to present his case, but to raise some of the objections which arise from it, and from those interpretations which later writers have placed upon it.

While Mill's defence of personal freedom was historically of great significance in setting a balance against unwarranted restraints by the law, it does not follow that the same arguments have equal force today. In Australia in the seventies, we are certainly hemmed in by much oppressive legislation which deprives a man of personal choice, and much of this is in the truly paternalistic tradition. Yet in the area of censorship this can no longer be maintained. No responsible citizen would seriously maintain that an oppressive restriction on what we may see, read or hear exists. It is a political as well as a philosophical paradox that many of those who have been most anti-censorship have been at the same time most active in creating increasingly restrictive legislation in other areas (e.g., consumer protection).

The first point would be irrelevant if Mill maintained his principle of personal autonomy as an absolute. Many of his followers appear to do so and press towards the logical extreme of total abolition of any legal constraints in the censorship area. Yet Mill, even though he appears to have suffered an over-reaction against the constraints of his time, did acknowledge some limits to his principle.

The most important reservation in this context is the concept of harm to others. This, in his day, was largely taken to mean physical harm and this remains valid. Since that time, however, the recognition of psychological harm has been more adequately developed, so that this has been a key issue in the censorship debate. This conflict of interests between the freedom of one person and the well-being of others leads to heated discussion of the evidence regarding harm and the likely outcome of legal intervention.

At a purely personal level the issue might be crystallised as 'your freedom to swing your arm ends where my nose begins' or, more formally:

"In all cases of paternalistic legislation there must be a heavy and clear burden of proof on the authorities to demonstrate the exact nature of the harmful effects (or beneficial consequences) to be avoided (or achieved) and the probability of their occurrence". (Dworkin, 1971)

Mill's position also depended on the idea of self-regarding acts, those acts which an individual may carry out which do not influence others. Such acts, he maintained, should be beyond the scope of the law. The principle is a sound one, but more recent developments in psychology and sociology lead one to doubt whether any acts of any consequence are truly self-regarding. The distinction made by Mill no longer has clarity. When it comes to what a man reads or sees in private one can no longer seriously maintain that this will have no effect on subsequent behaviour and attitudes. Therefore the freedom to read in private must be tempered by the possibility that there will be consequent harm to others. Whether evidence for this possibility exists will be discussed below.

At a still more delicate level, Mill allows that there could be occasions when one would intervene in a person's private life for his own good. The justification for this intrusion would have to be strong. He concedes such an intrusion would be justified when suicide is threatened by a person who is 'a child, or delirious or in some state of excitement or absorption incompatible with the full use of the reflecting faculty'. Because he has recognised some limiting circumstances in principle, does not mean he has therefore specified these limitations correctly. The constraints he concedes reflect his own philosophy of man which optimistically sees him as rational and inclined to choose what is good. It follows that the present-day humanist will follow Mill's argument closely. On the other hand, a philosophy of man which recognises that people often fail to make wise choices either in terms of self-interest or the welfare of others, will place much greater emphasis on a need for constraint.

This point highlights the conflict of views in the humanist and Christian positions. While the censorship controversy often appears to be a matter for professionals to discuss from one or another scientific viewpoint, in reality much of the argument is coloured by these deeper presuppositions. The scientific evidence is, and always will be, insufficient to provide a basis for resolving the inherent conflicts of interest. One is driven back to making decisions in the light of a certain view of the nature of man. As a result, the focus of the censorship debate does not remain on the nature of material which might circulate, but moves to an evaluation of the people who are exposed to it.

Two more forces

It is reasonable to assume that those who follow Mill's arguments and agree on his optimistic view of man are acting rationally and responsibly when they reject censorship. Inasfar as they maintain that the harm arising from published material is less than the harm arising from restraint on personal autonomy it is consistent to take a strong stand against paternalistic influence.

On the other side, it is equally reasonable to assume that those who argue from Christian ethics do so because they believe the potential harm arising from material being unrestrained is greater than the loss of personal choice involved.

Each side adopts its own emphases: the first gives prior consideration to the individual, and little attention to possible moral harm: the second sees the individual as an integral part of society in which rights, privileges and responsibilities must be balanced and lays great store by standards of morality.

There now exists a third force which has become increasingly influential in the censorship debate. This involves those of the political New Left, and the followers of writers like Marx and Marcuse. When censorship was a question of bowdlerising Shakespeare, or refraining from reference to a piano's legs, the debate was a matter of culture, taste and art. Today, however, the issues involve drawing quite different lines, and the freedom for pornography, written or visual, is more central. It is at this point that the political implications become clear, and this third force emerges. The basis for decision-making about censorship is quite different. The humanist position would be 'no-harm, therefore no restraint' and the Christian position would be 'harm requires restraint': this third position says 'because this will cause the harm we seek, we want no restraint'.

There is, in other words, a publicly expressed wish by those who seek destruction of the present society in favour of the counterculture to use those forces which will quickly and economically undermine existing social patterns. Anything which will weaken the family, and encourage a departure from traditional moral standards must therefore be actively encouraged. This is expressed by Richard Neville (1972) who clearly disagrees with those who see no adverse consequences from pornography. A similar position is shown in the advice given to the Italian Communist Party on what its attitude should be to pornography:

"We are interested in encouraging this type of play, and are likewise prepared to praise actors of such plays as champions of artistic freedom. We want to encourage this sort of production, and must lead people on to produce others that are, sexually speaking, more daring still. As a tactical policy our aim is to defend an enterprise which is pornographic and entirely free from the restrictions of ordinary moral rules. The producers and actors are, in effect, like ants working, voluntarily and without pay for us as they eat at the very roots of bourgeois society". (Whitehouse, 1971)

In more general terms Eysenck (1972) has indicated that the present anti-censorship trends can be most effective in achieving social disruption.

"If I were asked by some Martian invader how one could best destroy the human race without overt show of arms, I would have to say that the destruction of the ethical and moral standards which alone maintain a society would be the best method, and in order to achieve this aim I would have to say that unrestrained and continued showing of violence on television and film screens throughout the country, day in and day out, was by far the easiest and cheapest way."

The socially-destructive force, and in particular its challenge to a society which has developed on Christian values, is described by Schaeffer (1968): "Terry Southern is the author of "Candy" and "The Magic Christian". Despite the dirt and destructiveness he is making serious statements ... He is smashing the Christian position."

While the above paragraphs might suggest that promotion of pornography is an ideological, manoeuvre, a balance must be preserved. Quite apart from such influences, one must also identify a fourth force in the shape of financial vested interests. The gross financial exploitation undertaken by those behind the pornography is almost as much a matter for concern as is the exploitation of those involved in the production of material. The rationale for this position would be: 'Even if it does cause harm --so what?'.

The big money involved has been discussed at some length in the Presidential Report on Obscenity and Pornography (1970). It is clear from Gummer (1971) that the Danish producers remain major contributors to the economy, with big operators squeezing out the smaller firms. Evidence of criminal infiltration into that industry is on the increase. The same has recently been reported in America, with Mafia activities on a wide scale. A group of jurors in San Antonio found it necessary to report through the press:

"We believe eleven of the thirteen adult or pornographic movie houses and all adult book stores in Bexar County are controlled by either intra-state or interstate Crime syndicates: one group of which appears to have definite Mafia connections while another group is strongly suspected of organised mob connections". (News, 1973.)

Since there are so many conflicting interests involved in this issue of censorship, it is remarkable that those who oppose can appear to adopt an impregnable position. Those who argue for constraint typically see that safeguards are essential to avoid abuse. This is in contrast to the abolitionists who reject all possibility of harm, preaching an absolute position which can not be logically justified. Their position has been strengthened by the very force they most deplore.

Censorship by omission

Censorship does not necessarily involve active suppression of information or ideas. The outcome of failing to report one side of a story in the news media produces a distortion of truth as pernicious as any arising from oppressive censorship. It is not uncommon for those who speak against censorship under any circumstances, to practice this omission actively. This technique has enabled their position to be strengthened because other viewpoints fail to reach public attention.

The dangers of this kind of censorship are the greater for being difficult to document and because we cannot be aware of that which is kept from our attention. We can detect that media, like television and films, carry an undue emphasis on sex and violence at the present time, far in excess of the occurrence of events in the community. It is not as easy to detect what is, in consequence, omitted. We recognise that governments in a democracy should conduct their business openly. It is only occasionally that we detect that material has been suppressed or distorted for public presentation. However, we need not doubt that the detection rate is much lower than the rate of occurrence.

The omissions are not random. If they were they would be less dangerous. That news is selected from a point of view is evident from editorial policies. A real danger in Australia today is that the policy-making is in so few hands. As a result some views are given great prominence while others remain almost unheard. That this is so in the political arena provides a real threat to a stable society. Such lop-sided and hard-to-detect censorship. by omission provides a powerful argument against constraints on publication. It is not an overwhelming argument but it must be stressed because it operates so often in the hands of those who profess to be against censorship.

This omission of significant aspects of life brings an undue emphasis on themes which, while being defended as 'reality', do in fact grossly over-represent real life experiences. Michael Boddy (1971), writing as a theatre critic, has said that in handling press cuttings about live theatre he has found 'that even in this restricted field, eight-five per cent of the cuttings are obsessed in some way with sex and shock. The stuff has become a cancer. This singlemindedness is appalling'.

Increasingly, one reads of complaints since the introduction of 'R' certificate films that their proportion in the threatres is excessive to the point that freedom for families to choose films has been very much restricted. Again therefore one sees the obsessive preoccupation of themes sufficiently far removed from normal experience to be unsuitable for the young-- and in many cases only offering appeal to quite disturbed adults.

Similarly, in the medium of television, Gerbner (1972) found that violence featured in ninety-eight per cent of plays set in the past and all of those with a future setting. The censorship of omission is seen to be matched by a preoccupation with restricted themes. It will be argued below that the themes selected tend to be those where harm of various kinds can be identified.

Censorship as a Positive Influence

Censorship may be defended on the grounds that it has a positive part to play in the formation of attitudes and in the control of society.

Far from merely preventing some from enjoying what they see or read as their legitimate right, censorship has also a protective function both for individuals and society. Judge Windeyer, in an Australian judgement in 1968, stated 'it is assumed incontrovertibly by the common law that obscene writings do degrade and corrupt morals, by causing dirty-mindedness, by creating or pandering to a taste for the obscene'.

The man who cries loudly that his personal freedom is infringed by the restrictions of censorship is of course right. But then the responsibility of governments in the administration of law is the protection of society as well as the well-being of the individual: in the event of a clash of loyalties, we must decide whether the interests of the individual outweigh those of society. If not, then constraints must be placed on personal freedom.

Mary Whitehouse, in a recent lecture, expressed the view that 'censorship, effectively but sparingly used, is a liberal concept since it protects the life-style of the great majority'.

The positive influence which the law can exert was well expressed in the Wolfenden Report of 1957:

"The function of the criminal law ... is to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive and injurious and to provide sufficient safeguards against the exploitation and corruption of others, particularly those who are specially vulnerable ...

At this point it may be useful to depart briefly from the convenience of the word censorship, with all its undertones, and emphasise the positive influence one seeks by referring to 'quality control'. The term is no euphemism but genuinely approaches the question of constraint from a constructive viewpoint.

Quality control is readily understood in industrial settings where production is involved. Commodities are produced which must meet a minimum standard of quality or be rejected. A good factory will set its own standards and enforce them; others may seek to flood the market with inferior products. If there is any danger to the purchaser, external standards of control may be applied to which the producer must conform or be subject to prosecution. The emphasis throughout is not on rejection of the sub-standard but on preservation and protection of the quality product. In order to achieve this, rigorous rejection of sub-standard products is necessary. Those who speak for censorship as a positive influence are, in effect, seeking quality control of books, films etc. in just this way. It is assumed that there are some prevailing community standards worth preserving. It is assumed that judgements about acceptability are possible even though difficult. Moreover, the responsibility for such discriminations is best left where possible with the producers themselves, be they authors, publishers or film producers.

At the same time it is recognised that unscrupulous producers will enter the field and market sub-standard material. Pornographic material is the obvious example. When this happens, if the producer is prepared to exploit the market, there is a case for quality control being in the hands of an agency responsible to the community.

To argue that the setting of standards is difficult is no reason to stop trying. It has proved possible not only in such fields as engineering: we also have complex requirements in food and drug laws which provide protection and periodically come under review. It has been possible in the past to operate standards in censorship and it remains possible even at a time when many values are changing. The contemporary problem is not to identify a standard but to retain it in the face not only of natural shifts of emphasis in society but also in the face of pressure from those who will deny any basis for standards.

The topic will be discussed below with preference for the term 'quality control' but in places the term 'censorship' will inevitably intrude where reference is made to existing work where it was censorship which was being considered.

What is the Need for Quality Control Today?

Quality control is important to the continuation of a viable civilisation. The historian, Unwin (1934), after documenting the rise and fall of eighty eight major civilisations said:

"Every civilisation is established and consolidated by observing a strict sexual moral code, is maintained while this strict code is kept and decays when sexual licence is allowed. . . Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.

Denis de Rougemont (1963) states that 'without the sexual discipline which the so-called puritanical tendencies have imposed on us since Europe first existed, there would be nothing more in our civilisation than in those nations known as under-developed and no doubt less'.

Paradoxically, those who most militantly call for the removal of censorship restrictions in order to allow personal freedom are often those who will also be most vocal in calling for anti-pollution measures in our battle for ecological survival. There is a very fair analogy between the need to preserve a clean outer environment for physical survival, and the need to prevent psychological pollution by appropriate measures. Consistency demands controls in both contexts. The logic which seeks control over levels of lead or mercury and other physical pollutants should also require quality control over influences known to cause psychological harm.

That society is slow to act in both areas can be explained in many ways:

"It would seem that to justify a censorship law one would have to establish a danger-- the usual one put forward being moral danger. This concept, however, is not an easy one to define or establish. One might well consider the analogy of pollution. For some hundred years we have polluted the atmosphere and seas with industrial, chemical and household waste. Only recently it has become possible to measure the amount of pollution in the atmosphere, and it is even more recently that the alarms have been sufficient to move to action governments with an eye and a half on the industrial sector of the community". (Haynes, 1970.)

This comparison with the environmental pollution problem draws attention to several reasons for inadequate censorship provisions:
(a) The difficulty of being sure a danger exists.
(b) The very gradual increase in the size of the problem which lulls people into a false sense of security. Every student of elementary psychology knows that provided levels of stimulation are raised by small enough intervals, people will fail to avoid even quite dangerous levels of input.
(c) The further problem of persuading responsible bodies to act when such action risks the unpopularity of the electorate. In addition to the simple power of the vote, which may discourage courageous legislation, financial interests are also at work. It is obvious enough in the field of physical pollution that controlling legislation relating to smoking and car exhausts, for example, will have enormous repercussions on the economy. Resistance from vested interests will clearly deter legislators. By the same token, there are large sums of money to be made by exploiters out of sexually salacious and other potentially censorable material.

Society too has has its price. It would appear that many who might consider it good to restrict the supply of undesirable material are not prepared to face the costs involved, and we live by a morality of expediency. So Herbert Packer, Professor of Law at Stanford, was quoted as saying: 'A vigorous campaign of law enforcement against pornography would involve costs in money, man-power and invasions of privacy that we as a society are unwilling to pay.' (1970.)

On an ABC Guest of Honour programme, the subject of censorship was discussed in relation to the British situation where censorship had been discontinued for a trial period of five years. In that programme, an eminent publisher explained that anyone considering publishing faced the risk of prosecution if he were to offend public taste. His criteria of self-censorship, which is advocating the internally-operated quality control mentioned above, were: 'Is it good and is it necessary?'. If such an approach were universally applied to books, plays and films, then it would be easier to support the abolition of formal censorship. That high-minded approach to publishing in Britain has not met with the success its advocates predicted. Consequently, in 1973 the Home Secretary responded to public pressure to impose tighter restrictions on the production and display of pornography. Unhappily, we too easily allow ourselves to become confused more in some areas than others. Holbrook (1972) remarks that 'there is in our culture at large an amount of hate which, if it were devoted to say racial discrimination, we should see as a problem demanding our urgent attention. Because the hate is directed at targets which we are accustomed to hate unconsciously, such as woman, representing our own vulnerability, we do not see how dangerous the situation is.'

Traditionally the law has accepted this responsibility for interpreting community standards even at the risk of infringing individual freedom. As long as the majority was prepared to accept that it was proper for the law to act in this protective way, censorship and similar constraints on freedom of action operated with little question. Today, however, personal freedom is often prized more highly than the good of society more generally, so politicians and legislators are being forced into the position of extending the boundaries of personal freedom so widely that those least able to object suffer most. The law must surely recognise a human right to protection from offence that many anti-censorship enthusiasts have forgotten. In the words of Ruth Brine (1971), 'If some have the right to pornography, others have an equal right not to have it foisted on them'. Or, as Haynes (1970), has put it: 'If individual freedom demands that person x can read document A, it also demands that person y may avoid reading it if he so desires. Thus, there must always be restrictions on the display of material.'

Strangely enough, it could easily happen that the minority group seeking the complete abolition of censorship for the sake of personal liberty if successful would bring about the very opposite of their intentions. Reo Christenson (1970) puts the arguments for the American scene succinctly when he says: 'Paradoxically, the existence of censorship probably assures greater freedom in America than its absence. If, somehow, the tiny minority (Gallup estimates five to six per cent) which wants no censorship were to have their way, it would be an open invitation for vigilante groups to take over. Outraged at the irresponsibles, the Middle American would employ extra-legal pressures as a substitute for law. And a sorry substitute they would be. Controlling pornography by legal means and orderly institutions gives us the best assurance that society's concern will be dealt with in a civilised manner'.

That prediction came true in 1973 when it was reported that the Klu Klux Klan had moved into the area of pornography control. Clearly the ideal of individual autonomy operating runs into problems when there are groups who are prepared to exert control for their own ends. This is why the control must rest with the legitimately established authority, yet at the same time be open to public scrutiny. It was the warning of Lewis in the Riddell Memorial Lectures (1943) that we should not 'be deceived by phrases about man taking charge of his own destiny. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of others. They will simply be men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?'

Such a fear of the misuse of authority can of course be used as the basis for being against censorship or quality control, rather than for restraint. If one fears that the legitimately established authority cannot be trusted to operate benevolently, it will appear that no control is to be preferred. The argument here is that the real choice is not between control or no control, but between recognised authority and capricious pressures not open to public inspection or influence. Under these circumstances it is better that we appoint responsible bodies than allow the power to rest with vested interests. That the latter arrangement has so much support at the present suggests that established authority is viewed most suspiciously at the present time. A great deal of evidence in related areas would confirm this suspicion.

What do people want?

In asking 'Do we need quality control?' we may also ask 'Do people want it?'. Evidence will be most useful if it comes from a community that has experienced the effective absence of censorship. The U.S.A. had done this and the evidence there is that about 6% want abolition of censorship. The Harris Poll of 1969 reported that 76% wanted pornographic literature outlawed and in the Gallup Poll of 1969 85% favoured stricter laws on pornography.

An Australian public opinion poll on censorship was reported in the press on 3 December 1970, reflecting attitudes around the time that a liberalised policy was started under the Liberal Government. It was found that 55% favoured maintaining existing standards or tightening up, while 35% wanted the standard relaxed. Since that time a relaxation of standards has occurred to the point that the Labor policy of removal of censorship has effectively been implemented. It is therefore instructive to find that only 27% of a sample reported on 30 July 1973 considered censorship as 'wrong' or 'very wrong' while 46% saw it as 'right' or 'very right' with 26% 'neither right nor wrong'. In comparing these two reports the paper (the Age) stated that 'answers reflected an increased support for the idea with women taking a generally more conservative line than men'. Considering that abolition of censorship is a feature of Labor party policy, it is also of interest to note that in the poll 44% of Labor voters described censorship as right or harmless.

It appears that as quality has gone down, more people are recognising the need to preserve it, and this is most apparent among women, who, after all, suffer the greatest humiliation and offence from present trends in the treatment of sex and violence in the media.

A similar trend emerged in Britain following a more liberal policy. In 1972 a national petition was organised seeking signatures in support of standards of decency to be presented to the British Government. The petition was remarkable in that 1,350,000 signatures were obtained, making it the largest petition ever presented to Parliament. More significantly, however, the petitions were circulated in as wide a cross-section of the community as possible, and spot-checks indicated that, on average, 85% of those asked to sign were prepared to do so.

Taking the evidence from Britain, America and Australia together, the indications are that when censorship restrictions are tight they are also unpopular. Yet when they are removed there is an increasing wish for them to be reinstituted. Since, at the time of writing, the open availability of pornography has not reached the stage of those other countries but the policy of liberalisation is continuing, one may predict that the next few years will see mounting, support for the return of controls.

In the meantime, those in favour of quality control will need to emphasise the harm which occurs when all restraint is abandoned, since it is only on the basis of a demonstration of harm that changes are likely to be considered. In that connection it is noteworthy that, of the four attitudes described above, three recognise the harmfulness of some material, while one does not. It therefore remains to examine whether the supposition of harm is justified.

Research Evidence on Harm: Australia and Overseas

A major landmark in the research literature making recommendations on censorship was the American Commission Report on Censorship and Pornography (1970). The Commission's findings were first presented at a conference in Miami Beach where a sample of the research was reported. The chairman on that occasion made it clear that the $2 million grant was allocated to research projects which could be completed in time to allow a report within a three year period. He stressed that the work could not say anything about long term effects of pornographic material. This is a most serious criticism of the findings since the crucial question does relate to long term effects.

Secondly, those reports which were presented in public came in for very heavy fire both in relation to methodology and to the conclusions drawn from the results. Yet the findings of the Commission can of course only be guided by what the various groups reported they had found.

Thirdly, instead of the usual agreement among Commissioners when reports are prepared for Washington, in this case only twelve of the eighteen could support the main proposition of the Commission. In the published report of 700 pages over 250 constitute expressions of dissent from the majority position. Limitations in specific studies and the conclusions drawn from them have been considered elsewhere (Court, 1971, 1972a, 1973).

The Commission conclusion was a very radical rejection of censorship of material except with reference to children. Yet the studies from which the recommendations stem had so many other short-comings that this conclusion must be among the most unsubstantiated ever to appear in such a setting. If one seeks evidence against censorship it will not be found here. What is particularly disappointing is the complete absence of studies concerned with sexual violence and studies of imitative learning. This style of learning has been shown to be of importance in the acquisition of aggressive behaviour patterns and fairly certainly the same would have been found in sexual and aggressive-sexual learning.

Hard evidence of direct cause and effect relationships between harmful material and subsequent ill effects is not available and one doubts if it ever will be. The effects are more subtle than this and the consequences are to be seen in various ways.

Long term effects, (i.e. over a generation or two) may well exist but to disentangle these from many other socially significant events would be inconceivably difficult. Moreover, the ways in which effects may express themselves will not necessarily take expected forms.

Reo Christenson (1970), a political scientist, takes issue with the Civil Liberties position saying:

"Obviously the ACLU wants society to consider only short-term effects since it regards long-term effects as unknowable. The truth is that short-term effects are also unknowable ... Unhappily all the major premises on which our society rests derive from the realm of intuition-the viscera.

While this is an unduly pessimistic view of the sources from which we may derive evidence, it is true enough when considering the application of experiments in this field.

In our society, the presentation of violence and aggression on television is four times as great as that representing nurturance and care. An Australian study of a few years ago designed to look at the effect of children's comics on violence was unable to find a direct link between exposure to violence and its overt expression. What did emerge, however, was in some ways more alarming, viz. that extensive exposure to violence in this fantasy material led to a gradual acceptance or tolerance of violence when witnessed. Thus what might once have been shocking or offensive, became unremarkable, leading to what has been called 'affectlessness'.

The powerful and dangerous influences of television have now been rather extensively documented by the Surgeon General's Report (1972) and summarised in The Early Window, (Liebert, Neale and Davidson, 1972). Some may argue that censorship is an inappropriate mode of handling these dangers. Nonetheless, dangers do exist and must be managed. Quality control, with its emphasis on what is valuable and worth preserving deserves consideration. In this connection, Berkowitz (1971) whose own work on effects has been so influential, cites the American National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence report, saying:

"A constant diet of violent behavior on television has an adverse effect on human character and attitudes. Violence on television encourages violent forms of behavior and fosters moral and social values about violence in daily life which are unacceptable in a civilised society.

Berkowitz does not go on to argue for censorship as such, but does say that the action which a society takes when faced with such information will depend on the values which are rated most highly.

The same important point is made by Eysenck (1972) after reviewing the effects of pornography. He comes to the conclusion that the adverse effects of the portrayal of violence and the dissemination of pornography are now beyond doubt, both in the short and the long term. The real question then becomes focussed on 'the nature of the society in which we wish to live, and in which we wish our children to live-neither more nor less'.

Some myths and legends

A number of cliches recur in any discussion of censorship which have become so popular among intellectuals that they have achieved the status of indisputable facts. These dogmatic assertions, largely presented without evidence or at best with inadequate evidence, deserve challenge. They will be summarised only briefly here as they have been more fully treated elsewhere.

The myths and legends refer to the two types of material mentioned above which most deserve to come under quality control, viz. pornography and explicit violence without retribution. While a case might be made for control of other kinds of material on moral or even political grounds, it is these two which have been the subject of scientific study. While moral arguments are relevant to the issue, they are insufficient in themselves in a pluralistic society to justify legal control. Evidence of psychological and sociological harm is most pertinent to the issue.

(a) 'Pornography has no effect'.
This view is negated by numerous of the American Presidential Studies, and goes contrary to the review of Yaffe (1972) as well as Eysenck's (1972) chapter on the issue. The myth has arisen among those who wished to believe it by attending only to flawed, inadequate or irrelevant evidence and deserves no further attention.

(b) 'Violence material is dangerous but sexual material is not.
This view justifies a double standard to controls. It is unwarranted since responses to both types of stimuli appear to be mediated by the process of modelling; since the links between sexual and aggressive drives are very close; and because the distinction between sex and violence is no longer real. The destructive nature of much contemporary pornography, treating themes such as flagellation and rape is such that a distinction betwen sexual and violent themes is unjustified. The 'porno-violence' themes have become increasingly evident in films and books, yet Hill and Link (1970) pointed out that the American Commission failed to investigate the effects of such material.

(c) 'This stuff has always been around; censorship won't stop it, any more than prohibition stopped drinking'.
It is one thing for material to circulate illictly. It is quite another to allow free access, as in Denmark. The pervert who seeks out his material as a junkie seeks drugs may do so recognising he breaches the accepted norms of the culture. To remove all controls is to integrate that material which feeds his perversions into the culture, legitimising it for him and extending its acceptance among others. This is of course the whole point for those who see no distinction between 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Quality control, on the other hand, assumes some values are worth preserving at the expense of others; the acceptance of interpersonal aggression and sexual activities like rape and bestiality can only be socially dangerous. Berkowitz (1971) considers that there is this danger in the elimination of censorship, and especially so with children since 'experiments with children suggest that youngsters often take a watching adult's failure to condemn a certain behaviour as a sign that he might actually approve of this conduct'. This effect is even more powerful if sanctions which have existed for a long term are then removed. Adults as well as children come to believe that what was wrong has become legitimate.

An extension of this legitimising argument also occurs at a sociological level. One result of mass media influences in particular can be so to emphasise certain themes, unusual but newsworthy, that they become accepted as the norm. In effect, the shape of our world is influenced by what the media portray, and the recipients readjust their perceptions accordingly (Erikson, 1966). The process can go further, however, with the concept proposed by Wilkins (1964) of 'deviation amplification'. Projection of deviate behaviour through the media may bring about a polarisation of attitudes thereby increasing the amount of deviance existing in a community. Cohen (1973) has discussed ways in which information on deviance through the media may have this undesirable consequence. One conclusion may be that information without resort to evaluation can at times be counter-productive.

The passing reference to prohibition and alcohol is often introduced to imply that censorship is bound to fail. The analogy is in reality a very bad one. No-one who advocates control of media is advocating total suppression. It is discrimination between good and bad which is sought so that what is worth keeping may be retained. To invoke prohibition is no better as an argument than to discredit a position with a smear campaign.

(d) 'Remove controls and interest will decline'.
This myth arises from studies on sales of pornography in Denmark. The evidence is to the contrary, as the continuing multimillion dollar industry makes clear. For discussion of the detail of this see Gummer (1971) and Court (1971).

(e) 'Make pornography freely available and sex crimes will diminish'.
Again the evidence now available from several countries is to the contrary (Court, 1973). Not only have the problems increased, but the severity of the crimes is greater. The accelerating upward curve of offences like reported rape in Australia as in other countries is in complete contrast to the predictions of the anti-censorship liberals.

(f) 'People will quickly become bored'.
This is true only for some people and is irrelevant when a significant group of sexually-disturbed people have an opposite reaction (Davis and Braucht 1970, Hill and Link 1970, Court 1973). That studies on normal white heterosexual students produce boredom is no consolation if the potential rapist is more likely to commit an offence when stimulated by pornographic material (Goldstein et al. 1970, Walker 1970).

(g) 'Sexually explicit materials may even have beneficial effects for some, serving as a catharsis'.
This is one of the most persistent of the myths. Based on studies of imitation of violence (Feshbach 1955), the argument has been extrapolated to include sexually explicit materials. However, efforts to replicate the original findings not only failed to do so but the accumulated evidence now convincingly shows that an increased acting-out behaviour is typical (Liebert, Neale and Davidson 1972). The whole idea is no more than a plausible theory (Maddison 1971) and completely lacks evidential support.

As these various propositions which have served as the basis for the anti-censorship argument can no longer be maintained on scientific grounds, the case for quality control is progressively strengthened.

Why is Censorship being Challenged?

Why should it be that such a long-established institution as censorship is being so called into question at this time? Can it be that a11 previous generations were wrong or misguided? Some would no doubt say 'Yes!'. Could it be that people are reacting not against censorship but bad censorship? For many the answer to that is 'No'. There is a genuine questioning whether the restraints imposed by society can be tolerated by the individual. There is a clamour for personal freedom that seeks to throw off all restraints. Such a widespread and forceful clamour deserves understanding. Certain trends in psychology have a bearing on this.

The present young adult population started life in the years from 1940 onwards and hence spent formative years in the post war period. That in itself could explain why an attitude of rejection of authority of parents and governments might spring up. But more particularly, the period of the 'fifties and 'sixties saw the heyday of free expression as an approach to child rearing practices. The theories of Freud were widely accepted especially in intellectual families and the concept of repression was one seen to be particularly dangerous to healthy emotional development. The prevailing belief that repression was fundamentally bad has now found its way through to a generation which has become adult and rejects controls even more vigorously.

If Freud was right, and the generation of parents that followed his ideas was right, then the present generation is also right in resisting any attempt at repression of emotional material. It appears to follow fairly readily that censorship would have to be resisted as a kind of collective superego to be overcome. In other words, rejection of censorship seems entirely consistent with an acceptance of Freudian theory.

So we must ask, how well has the view stood up, that our neurotic problems will be resolved if we allow free expression to the Id, fight against the superego and counteract the harmful effects of repression? Since the clearest evidence regarding the effect of removing repression is seen in the results of psychoanalytic treatment, we may ask how much benefit has accumulated over the years by this period.

Wolpe (1964), once an analyst now a behaviourist writes '. . . the American Psychoanalytic Association appointed its now famous Fact-Gathering Committee to survey the results of psychoanalytic practice. The Chairman of this committee ... subsequently stated.. . that his association made no claims of therapeutic usefulness for psychoanalytic methods'.

Mowrer (1961), from the position of learning theory, goes further in his rejection of the Freudian model. He contends that neurotic reactions arise not from an oversevere superego bringing about undue repression but quite the reverse. Rather he argues 'that the superego has itself been repudiated and repressed', so that treatment aimed at weakening the superego will not simply prove ineffectual; it will actually make people worse. For ten years now he has been writing to the effect that psychoanalysis is basically antitherapeutic and there are now many to agree with him.

Thirdly, the existentialist and humanist, Rollo May (1969), writes of the disappointing effect of overcoming repression.

"In an amazingly short period, we shifted from acting as though sex did not exist at all to being obsessed with it . . . partly as a result of this radical shift, many therapists today rarely see patients who exhibit repression of sex ... in fact, we find in the people who come for help just the opposite: A great deal of talk about sex, a great deal of activity, but what our patients do complain of is lack of feeling and passion . . . so much sex and so little meaning or even fun to it".

Fourthly, the late Professor of English at Oxford and Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis (1955), wrote:

"They tell you sex has become a mess because it was all hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up (repression) had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess.

The final objection can be derived suprisingly enough from Freud. Although he strongly advocated the removal of repressive influences for the individual, and within the confines of therapy, he did not extend this principle into the social setting. 'Freud believed that the disciplining of eros was necessary for a culture, and that it was from the repression and sublimation of erotic impulses that the power came out of which civilisations were built'. (May, 1969.)

Quality Control implies moral values

To this point the censorship-issue has been examined in terms of evidence and lines of argument that are open to general discussion. It is apparent, however, that in the last analysis scientific evidence is inadequate to establish the criteria for quality control. The values which are to be preserved in a society rest rather on moral and ethical judgements.

Necessarily those who reject censorship are invoking value judgements about the society and the nature of man just as much as those who advocate controls. The difference is that the former group does not have to defend any one set of values, whereas those who seek controls must propose criteria and a basis for them.

In Australia, there remains a strong case for proposing Christian values as providing the necessary criteria. Even allowing that the society is pluralist it nonetheless remains true that, on census returns some ninety percent of the the adult population indicate a Christian adherence. The high figure occurs, moreover, in a setting where ample opportunity exists for registering other beliefs or none.

It does not, of course, follow that Christian codes must be imposed willy-nilly without recognition of the needs and rights of others. The Longford Report (1972) provides a balanced discussion of this sensitive issue (see also Court, 1972b).

Although the Christian would see the protection afforded by censorship as contributing to the spiritual welfare of individuals, it would be quite improper to invoke the law for such a purpose. In this connection, a useful statement was issued in the Archbishop of Canterbury's Committee Report on Divorce:

"Any advice that the Church tenders to the State must rest, not upon doctrines that only Christians accept, but upon premises that enjoy wide acknowledgment in the nation as a whole. (Report, 1964.)

One further example in this context demonstrates the position that a Christian may adopt in approaching legislation in the moral area.

"It is the duty of a Christian to support the authority of the State. It may be his duty also to labour for the reformation of the laws of the State. In doing this, he has no right to put aside what he has learnt as a Christian, and in the quality of citizenship to act as a mere natural man. Such a division of personality is intolerable. But neither is he bound to insist that the laws of the State, in regard to marriage or in regard to anything else, shall conform exactly to Christian teaching. Not all the subjects of the State are Christian and the State must legislate for all. (Report, 1964.)

In rather marked contrast to so much negative legislation defining what may not be done, the Christian has very clear positive lines of guidance over the suitability of material. 'Fill your minds with those thing that are good and deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely and honorable' (Philippians 4.8.). This kind of advice provides a high ideal for the concept of quality control. The emphasis here as elsewhere in New Testament teaching is less on the external stimulus than on the individual's reaction to it. The laws must also make the same stand, seeking to judge not simply the artistic or literary merit but also what will be the effect on individuals. Such a position makes objective criteria for legislation almost unattainable, but nonetheless worth striving for.

Differences in approach towards what should be available to people spring from quite fundamentally different views of human nature. The humanistic position is characteristically optimistic about man's potential for good if only he is freed from restraints; the Christian view is not the opposite of this in the sense of being totally pessimistic. It does, however, adopt a realistic view of human nature in recognising man's fallibility and failure. From the viewpoint that people do not always judge wisely; that disturbed people can be a menace both to themselves and to others; that children deserve a degree of protection from some material in their formative years; it follows that total freedom for all adults to read, see and hear what they please will in reality lead to a loss of true freedom. The controls will simply move into unscrupulous hands and multiply the exploitation already inherent in material which has traditionally been censored.



POST-PUBLICATION ADDENDUM BY JOHN RAY

I might note that, as a libertarian conservative, I personally have always been opposed to ALL censorship for any reason -- except where there is advocacy of interpersonal violence. I see advocacy of violence as little different in principle from actual violence. It aims to use others for one's own violent ends. So it should be treated in much the same way as actual violence, just as attempted murder is treated in a similar way to actual murder. Other than in that case, however, I believe, as Queen Elizabeth I did, that people should be allowed to go to the Devil in their own way. I included the above chapter in my book, however, as mine is a minority view among conservatives.



NOTE:

As with other chapters in this book, full citation details for all references used can be found in a separate consolidated list of references here

New Zealand Psychologist, 1974, 3 (1), 21-26.

Also reprinted as Chapter 51 in: J.J. Ray (Ed.) "Conservatism as Heresy". Sydney: A.N.Z. Book Co., 1974

HOW GOOD IS THE WILSON-PATTERSON CONSERVATISM SCALE?



JOHN J RAY

University of New South Wales

A review of findings with the Wilson and Patterson C-scale shows that, contrary to its authors' claims, it is not uniformly of high reliability, nor is it especially immune to acquiescent response set. The correlation between its nominally positive and negative halves has even been found on some occasions to be positive -- thus throwing the validity of the scale into question. It is pointed out that the short item format used in the C-scale is not original to Wilson and Patterson, and that a revised version of the scale is in existence which appears to overcome some of the defects mentioned above. It is concluded that the field of work opened up by the C-scale is of great intrinsic interest whether or not the C-scale has the psychometric advantages that were originally expected.

Since its publication in 1968, the Wilson and Patterson conservatism (C) scale appears already to have given rise to considerable interest and use. See for example Bagley (1970), Boshier (1969, 1972) and the references listed in Wilson and Nias (1972). It seems timely therefore to attempt a review of work done with this scale to see if it has in fact lived up to its great initial promise. The recent article by Wilson and Nias (1972) does attempt such a review but fails to report certain data leading to criticism of the scale.

The C-scale was presented as an innovation in the form of attitude measurement. Instead of full sentences it presented single words and phrases for the subject to respond to. From this format several advantages were expected: (1) It should be less susceptible to acquiescent set; (2) It should be more valid (by eliminating idiosyncratic "contextual" factors); (3) It should be less susceptible to social desirability contamination, it was also shown as a matter of empirical fact to be exceptionally reliable in the initial study.

Perhaps the first thing to note in evaluating these claims is that this format is not in fact original to Wilson and Patterson. Alpert and Sargent (1941) used something very similar for the measurement of conservatism, and for the measurement of other variables, the use of "adjective check-lists" is a well-known technique. See for example Mitchell (1961) -- where an adjective check list was shown to be exceptionally valid in the measurement of achievement motivation. The contribution of Wilson and Patterson, then, must be seen in the particular scale they present rather than in the format of that scale.

In their 1972 review, Wilson and Nias give by far the most space to acquiescence as the area where the C-scale is said to be superior. They say that their format attracts less acquiescence than the "old" format. They point to the great difficulties which the F and D scales have with acquiescent response set contamination and quote Cloud and Vaughan (1969) in support of their claims that the C-scale provides a better alternative for this reason. Cloud and Vaughan do in fact go to great lengths to demonstrate that the C-scale is little affected by acquiescence. However, as I have suggested elsewhere (Ray, 1972a), there is some failure here to distinguish between acquiescence as an artifactual and as an empirical correlate of the scale score. In truth, any balanced scale, no matter how poor, must control perfectly for artifactual contamination of the scale score with acquiescence. Where there are an equal number of positive and negative items which are summed to provide a total score, acquiescence should cause an increase in the scores on the positive items and a decrease in the scores on the reversed items. Since acquiescent response set is conceptualized as content-irrelevant, the effects should be equal for both sorts of items and the increases and decreases would hence cancel one another out. Thus not only the C-scale but also the balanced D and F scales by Haiman (1964), Ray (1970), Lee and Warr (1969) and Ray (1972b), provide perfectly satisfactory alternatives to the original F and D scales as far as eliminating the acquiescence problem is concerned. A somewhat different issue is the empirical correlation of some variable such as dogmatism truly measured, and acquiescence truly measured. In this respect there is some evidence that dogmatism is empirically related to acquiescence or "yeasaying" (Ray, 1970) but authoritarianism is not (Ray, 1971b). The only effect a correlation of this sort might reasonably be expected to have would be to cause us to calculate a yeasaying score as well as a content score for the balanced scale we are using and partial out the effect due to acquiescence.

Why then the fuss (exemplified by Wilson and Nias (1972) but not original to them) about the correlation between the positive and negative halves of balanced scales? As we have seen, the control against acquiescence provided by a balanced scale is in no way dependent on the magnitude of this statistic. The answer is that this correlation may reflect on the validity of our items if it is low. If one set of items is deliberately worded (as in balanced F scales) to mean the opposite of the other set, a failure to find a negative correlation reflects a failure of one or both of those item-sets to measure what it was intended to measure. It has twice been shown, however, that when normal psychometric precautions are observed, correlations of as high as -.71 can be obtained between item sets such as this (Ray, 1970, 1972b). The C-scale has thus no monopoly on high negative correlation between its two halves. Such results are also obtainable with conventional format balanced F and D scales.

What we must remember however is that the correlation between the two halves of a scale is an empirical matter that may truly reflect something about the world as well as about the operation of acquiescent set. Liberalism and Conservatism could (as Kerlinger (1967) believes) in fact be orthogonal. Measured orthogonality may reflect the nature of things as they are, not the presence of a measurement artifact due to acquiescence. How we assess what part of the correlation between the two halves of a balanced scale is due to acquiescence and what part is due to real opposition between the underlying attitudes is a rather difficult matter and one that is treated more fully elsewhere (Ray. 1973). For our present purposes however, it should be sufficient to look at the actual performance of the C-scale and some of its alternatives to enable us to assess the relative merits of the different scales as far as the correlation between the two halves is concerned. Even a relatively simplistic approach does serve where, as in the present case, the differences between the various scales are extreme.

Wilson and Nias (1972) rely heavily for their treatment of this issue on data from one of my own unpublished papers -- a paper partly based on my M.A. work at the University of Sydney (not as they state, Macquarie University) entitled "Are Liberalism and Conservatism orthogonal?" This paper was in fact the first version of a report later extensively recast and published as: "Are conservatism scales irreversible?" (Ray, 1972a). Sadly, Wilson and Nias seriously misunderstand and misrepresent the conclusions of the original paper. They report, quite correctly, my findings that a set of conventional items derived from the F, R, E and D scales, when divided up into positive and negative items, form two moderately reliable scales which correlate only .099. They also report that I found two scales in the new format measuring respectively "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" to correlate by contrast -.639. This also is true -- as far as it goes. What they fail to mention is that these two latter scales were not composed entirely of items worded in the one direction but were in fact both themselves balanced scales. The distinction between "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" scales was a conceptual one influenced by Kerlinger's (1967) proposals, not a distinction in terms of direction of wording. Putting it another way, the Conservatism scale was composed of pro-conservative and anti-conservative items and the Liberalism scale of pro-liberalism and anti-liberalism items. It was not assumed that an anticonservative item was pro-liberal or vice versa. This in fact was the fault of the paper, that made it unpublishable in its original form. The decision as to whether an item was pro-conservative or anti-liberal (for instance) was on some occasions a necessarily subjective one. Wilson and Nias can, then, claim no support from my paper for their contention that the C-scale shows characteristically higher correlations between positive and negative halves than do other scales in conventional format. In fact quite the opposite is the case. The published version of this paper (Ray, 1972a) shows that the C-scale has a positive correlation (of .288) between its two halves. My own revised version of the C-scale on the same sample showed a moderate negative correlation between the two halves. Wilson and Nias do not mention this finding at all.

How do we reconcile the above findings concerning the C-scale with those reported by Cloud and Vaughan (1969), who found a correlation between the two halves of -.68? At least part of the explanation may lie in variations in the gross amount of acquiescence (Yeasaying). Unlike Wilson or Cloud and Vaughan, I have found (see Ray, 1971a) that short format scales do elicit a large preponderance of "Yes" over "No" responses. Where the meaning-opposition between the supposedly negative and positive items is in fact slight, this acquiescence (which by definition has the effect of causing items to be responded to as if they were similar) may more than cancel out any tendency to respond to the items as if they were opposed. That the revised C-scale (Ray, 1972a) does not share the same problem of poor meaning-opposition between its two halves is attested to by the correlations between these two halves of -.373 and -.181 for the conscript and the student samples respectively (Ray, 1972b). It will be evident then that acquiescence can have a great effect on the validity of the C-scale published by Wilson and Patterson (19G8).

We must conclude then that Wilson's first three claims for his scale are far from universally supported. In three studies reported in two articles (Ray, 1971a, and 1972a) it has been found that the C-scale is of deficient reliability (Ray, 1971a) when applied to general population samples and it is strongly affected by acquiescent response set to the point of making the scale seriously invalid (Ray, 1972a). His more recently made claim that the scale is little affected by social desirability set has been challenged by Schneider (1973). The above criticism of the C-scale's reliability must be qualified somewhat, however. Bagley, Wilson and Boshier (1970) used a community sample and found a reliability of .89, which is substantial. Regrettably, however, door-to-door samples are not necessarily representative either. The "volunteer artifact" can be extremely large and one cannot assume that the attitudes of co-operative people are organized in the same way as the attitudes of the non co-operative. Conscript samples are not biased in this way (filling out questionnaires is a welcome alternative to the parade ground) and may hence be far more representative (within the limits of age and sex) than almost any other sample. Indeed, if we assume that filling out questionnaires is a task more intelligible and congenial to more educated people, the "Volunteer" bias of a door-to-door sample could also be an educational bias. The Bagley, Wilson and Boshier (1970) results might then not be seriously in conflict with the generalization made earlier that C-scale reliabilities are satisfactory only when the scale is applied to educated samples.

Another issue which has arisen recently is Boshier's (1972) demonstration that the C-scale items can factorially be segregated into no less than four orthogonal sub-scales and that these sub-scales are identifiable in terms of reasonably traditional content areas. This finding however, will be deterring only to tyros who fancy that factor analysis tells one what the structure of an item set is. Although factor analysis can be useful in suggesting hypotheses, it has long been abandoned as a means of testing hypotheses about structure (witness the British-American dispute about the structure of intelligence). Obviously, the unifactor structure found in the items by Wilson (1970) is equally as "correct" as the structure found by Boshier (1972). With different factor analytical methods many structures are possible. Only usefulness determines which one we prefer.

In conclusion, then, it is not true that the correlation between positive and negative halves is greatly superior or even at all superior in the C-scale as compared to conventional balanced scales in the same content area. It is also not true that the C-scale is exceptionally reliable or that it is uniformly resistant to acquiescent set. The interest of the C-scale then must remain intrinsic. It is interesting because of its inherent directness. Although this directness may not lead to the psychometric advantages claimed by Wilson and Nias (1972) it does open up a field worth investigating in its own right. The hypotheses of Kerlinger (1967) are one instance where the C-scale makes possible a more exact test of something asserted about social attitudes (see Kerlinger, 1972; Ray, 1972a).

Another final observation that might have some usefulness is that those who wish to use the new item format might find the revised C-scale (Ray, 1972a) superior to the original. The revised scale does at least initially appear to overcome three of the problems with the original: low general population reliability; occasional positive correlations between the supposedly negative and positive halves; and the regular alternation between negative and positive items which makes it possible that some respondents will "guess the pattern" and thus give spuriously consistent answers.


REFERENCES

Alpert, R. and Sargent, S. S. Conservatism-radicalism measured by immediate emotional reactions. Journal of Social Psychology, 1941, 14, 181-186.

Bagley, C. Racial prejudice and the conservative personality: A British sample. Political Studies, 1970, 18, 134-141.

Bagley, C., Wilson, G. D., and Boshier, R. W. The Conservatism scale: a factor structure comparison of English, Dutch and New Zealand samples. Journal of Social Psychology, 1970, 77, 739-740.

Boshier. R. W. A study of the relationship between self-concept and conservatism. Journal of Social Psychology, 1969, 77, 139-140.

Boshier, R. W. To rotate or not to rotate: The question of the conservatism scale. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 1972. 11, 313-323.

Cloud, J, and Vaughan, G. M. Using balanced scales to control acquiescence. Sociometry, 1969, 33. 193-202.

Haiman, F. S. A revised scale for the measurement of open mindedness. Speech Monographs, 1964, 31, 97-102.

Kerlinger, F. N. Social attitudes and their criterial referents: A structural theory. Psychological Review, 1967, 74, 110-122.

Kerlinger, F. N. The structure and content of social attitude referents: A preliminary study. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 1972, 32, 613-630.

Lee, R. E. and Warr, P. B. The development and standardization of a balanced `F' scale. Journal of General Psychology, 1969, 81, 109-129.

Mitchell, J. V. An analysis of the factorial dimensions of the achievement motivation construct. Journal of Educational Psychology, 1961, 52, 179-187.

Ray, J.J. (1970) The development and validation of a balanced Dogmatism scale. Australian Journal of Psychology, 22, 253-260.

Ray, J.J. (1971a) "A new measure of conservatism" -- Its limitations. British Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, 10, 79-80.

Ray, J.J. (1971b) An "Attitude to Authority" scale. Australian Psychologist, 6, 31-50.

Ray, J.J. (1972a) Are conservatism scales irreversible? British J. Social & Clinical Psychology 11, 346-352.

Ray, J.J. (1972b) A new balanced F scale -- And its relation to social class. Australian Psychologist 7, 155-166.

Ray, J. J. Acquiescence and the correlation between positive and negative halves of balanced scales. Unpublished paper available from author, 1973.

Schneider, J. F. The conservatism scale: Independent of SD? British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 1973, 12, 90-91.

Wilson, G. D. Is there a general factor in social attitudes? Evidence from a factor analysis of the conservatism scale. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 1970, 9, 101-107.

Wilson, G. D. and Nias, D. K. B. Measurement of social attitudes: A new approach. Perceptual and Motor Skills 1972, 35, 827-834.

Wilson, G. D. and Patterson, J. R. A new measure of conservatism. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 1968, 7, 264-269.


POST-PUBLICATION ADDENDA

1). Wilson's reply to this article simply pointed out that the C-scale does not usually have the problems I report in the article above. That is perfectly true. I have confirmed as much myself. See the reference hereunder. The C-scale is therefore suitable for continued use as long as checks are made to see that each particular use of it is not one of the "aberrant" cases. Sadly, such a check seems to be done very rarely.

Ray, J.J. (1980) Acquiescence and the Wilson Conservatism scale. Personality & Individual Differences, 1, 303-305.


2). My 1973 unpublished paper cited above is no longer available in its original form. A revised and expanded version is however available as under:

Ray, J.J. (Unpublished) Acquiescent response tendency: An update and some data on the invalidity of the Dogmatism scale