The University of Sydney has long been a centre of excellence for the study of the history of education and Professor Geoffrey Sherington, one time Dean of the Faculty of Education, has long been one of the leading Australian educational historians. This latest work with co-author, Julia Horne, University Historian at the University of Sydney, is a further testament to fine and engaging scholarship. The book is the product of a larger project on the public university in Australia funded by the Australian Research Council. The book highlights the value of public funding for research in the humanities. While Melbourne University Press originally suggested the idea of a short history of the university it is not an institutional history of the sort often associated with universities. Perhaps then the book did not face the same sort of problems often associated with corporate histories such as what can safely be included and what must be left out, what will offend and what will bore.
Robert Friedman, in Integration and Visibility (Oslo, 2000), argues that too many university histories are largely self-congratulatory. He suggested that what is needed is making visible individuals frequently ignored such as women, students and non-academic personnel. University histories he suggests need to illustrate the interplay between the university and its broader social context and to show how certain groups influenced the institution. This he argues necessitates looking at individual institutions rather than institutional types with monolithic mythologies and idealized archetypes, long cherished beliefs, slogans and truisms needing analysis. Friedman argues that unravelling the meanings of academic rhetorical clichés and not simply strip-mining quotations from the quarries of university archives illuminates the local dynamics of academic rhetoric and contextual meanings. Friedman concludes that analytic studies of universities need to understand how local conditions influence universities. Horne and Sherington's work admirably responds to his urgings.
Relatively recently at the University of Melbourne debate centred on the nature of the university in the twenty-first century. Because of the decline in public funding Melbourne University decided it would not be a public university but a public spirited one. This went relatively uncontested by most. One exception was a former state premier who argued that the University of Melbourne was and should be a public university. Horne and Sherington use the idea of a public university to frame their history of the University of Sydney. They argue the ideals behind the fledging university namely that it should be public, secular and open to all are still fundamental to the idea of an Australian public university. They examine how over its existence people associated with the University of Sydney have pursued the “seven pillars of wisdom”, shaped them, ignored or transformed them in order to assist the university to respond to ever changing social demands. These pillars were belief in the value of public institutions, of meritocracy, of a liberal education and of research, a belief in the value of character building through mind and body, of the engagement of religious and secular faiths with education and of philanthropy. They argue that these pillars have been essential to the growth of the University of Sydney for they exist deep within Australian society. They suggest core notions of a public university such as equity and access are of course still relevant today.
The book is clearly organised around chapters on a student life, academic life, teaching and research. It is narrative history at its best likely to appeal to a wide audience. The book is amply illustrated with a large selection of captivating photographs covering student life, teaching beyond the lecture halls, academic life, field research and expeditions, social science research and students over time. These and their accompanying annotations and commentary are a special feature of the book.
One final comment is in order. Horne and Sherington note “the exceptional intellectual credentials” of the first University of Sydney professors. Richard Selleck in The Shop: The University of Melbourne, 1850-1939 (Melbourne, 2003) noted that as late as 1928 University of Melbourne staff wondered “about the academic wholeheartedness of a man who leaves Cambridge for this benighted hole [and viewed] most of the Englishmen who have taken chairs here [as] hopeless duds who England has disgorged”. Perhaps Sydney then had the edge.
