Linus, to start with your premises isn't necessarily to end with your conclusions; so to raise your concerns is important but your deductions are a bit of a worry. Like Sheri, my experience is with the Catholic systems (NOT private, by the way, Sheri, if you know your Catholic educational philosophy, and only non-government-sector-located in this country and the US, while fully publicly-funded, fee-free and public-sector located throughout the OECD....a generalisation here perhaps?).

One of Apple's major beefs is the extent to which schooling is so boringly and reprehensively 'reproductive'. This means that, depending on choice of school, and with statistically-insignificant exceptions, its possible to track the life-chances of children from birth to death unless teachers are made aware of the individual initiatives, structures and cultures that insidiously contain or potentially advance their students' knowledgeability. That the process of raising awarenesss about such knowledge is political there can be little argument.

Some critics regard Apple as a determinist in this sense, but my view is that in critiquing the potential to crush or enhance human initiative and flexbility/reflex-ability, education policy studies uncovers the deeply reflective aspects of a teacher education curriculum that ensure that we constantly interrogate our deeply-embedded personal and political theories and practices and that, consequently, the same stuff has a chance of not being rammed down young throats every single year for the entire duration of a teacher's professional lifespan.

The way this is handled in Catholic schools (or intended to be - not necessarily the same thing!) is through reference to a pedagogical or formative method. By way of illustration, these vary depending on the philosophy of the religious order or congregation associated with the school. Thus, the Jesuits insist upon a pedagogy that upholds academic rigour and critical consciousness, the Benedictines on the value of reflection and hospitality to strangers and people of difference, including engagement with their ideas, etc.

I am sure that these practices or methods (rather than intractable and unbudging bodies of content) are also embedded in non-Catholic schools, both private and public, the legacy, as it were, of charismatic individuals who have left their mark on the school. In my experience this is to unleash the potential in the young and enthusiastic teacher rather than to subject him or her to the mind-numbing status of a cipher or blank slate upon whom a teacher-mentor encrypts a kind of lock-step technical formula or deviation-proof doctrine (which fundamentalist educators tend to insist upon) for fear of losing one's job.

As Robert shows, teaching is complex, and generalisations tend to stifle new knowledge.

A wink or an uncontrollable reactionary twitch? It makes no difference to Jack, Sheri, who trolls these columns, wherever I insert a post, to counter with a comment either denigrating of Catholic schools, in which you teach, or conversely committed to upholding the principles of public education. As it happens, so do I, if he has the literacy to understand me, despite my alleged pedantry.

Moreover, even though he takes a contrary view to most in this blog, he should know, before he spouts off, that Michael Apple is one of the most ardent global supporters of a public education, and that the hallowed status that Apple enjoys within the subdiscipline of Education Policy Sociology, and among those like Kalervo and myself who teach or have taught it, means that a criticism of Apple places Jack in support of the Baillieu government which has done its damnest to hobble public education and its social justice related policy ideas.

As an aside - and not to distract from the disgraceful cancellation of Apple's visit - while I perfectly understand why, for ease of self-identification, you should adumbrate Catholic schools with private schools, this is a widely-held misnomer and paradox that accounts for Australia having the largest private-school sector in the world, which is another reason for concern among those, including many in Catholic schools who, despite the association of the private sector with the free-market, value the role of the teacher as a social justician.

The fact is that the Catholic claim to public funding was accommodated in other polities by integrating Catholic schools within the public sector, principally because the teaching of the Catholic Church is that 'the Catholic school is not a private school but of its very nature public in character' ('The Catholic School', Section 58, Congregation for Catholic Education, 1971).

My PhD thesis ('Funding Australian Catholic Schools in New Times: Policy Contexts, Policy Participants & Theoretical Perspectives', UQ, 2001) researches in painful detail the adverse implications of Catholic school dislocation from the public sector for advancing and progressing the importance of social inclusion in Australian public education.

No, no, dear Jack; its Economics 101, pure and simple! The post-welfarist state (think New Times, for Gorsakes, and maybe read some Stephen Ball - a good friend of Michael Apple's, by the way, - on this) doesn't regard state schools as its own protected and cosseted public property, though would that it did; so you'd have to wind the clock back to before Hawke-Dawkins to correct your assumption that state schools are still the social policy site that the founding fathers (and mothers) intended them to be.

Instead think 'hiving-off', a la Thatcher-Baker in the UK and Reaganomics in the US, as in opening them up to the cut-throat competition you fondly believe isn't occurring. Thus nomenclatures, like 'public' or 'state', have no meaning in the neo-liberal order of things, as the cheated denizens of government school systems have yet to digest, even though this public policy involution has been shoved down everybody's throats for more than 25 years now!

You'd have to ask, then, why I would want the Catholic systems to join them; but, of course, the simple explanation is that I'm mad enough to believe in the tat that the Australian Catholic Church teaches and preaches about the social gospels but doesn't implement in its own approach to school-funding policy.

You can see from that just how much of an unwitting ideological ally and potential convert of theirs you are. (Giovanni Giordano has a nice 'Roman' ring to it, seeing that you also insist on using this archaic term). It sounds like the perfect name for, what I have shown you up to be as the ideological love-child of Archbishops Pell and Jensen, despite your protestations to the contrary!

While pondering a suitable reply, maybe do a little reading on Anthony Giddens and the public policy inversions of the last quarter century to help understand that, if you're serious about social justice and a better funding deal for state schools, the machinery of the state, such as it currently is, is the last thing you'd want to commandeer so as to influence a more just state-aid outcome.

Apologies, Jack; I meant 'Gianni Arnulfo', whch sounds suitably Pucciniesque. We could even commission an opera out of this, involving Julia, Tony, Helen, Pell, Jensen, Gough, Karmel, Gonski, Kemp, Latham, Howard, (Susan) Ryan, Angelo Gavrielatos, Peter Garrett, you and me, with sets from The Spotted Cow and Giant NZ Mussels slowly slithering their way across the stage (a poststatist, postmodern Foucauldian touch in which nothing is constant and everything contextual). Michael Apple could write the libretto, I'd compose the music and Stephen Ball would design the sets and costumes. Howard could take care of the choreography. Helen, magnifiently decolletaged, would do her best rendition of Tebaldi if we gave her a few arias and a heart-breaking duet with Peter, and Pell, appropriately hosed in cardinalatial tights, should do a policy pas de deux with the PM. The denouement would see you being 'received' by Rome, as it finally stages a take-over for the entire state-school franchise put out for tender by Julia as her response to Gonski. I can see Abbott embracing you with open arms as part of this scenario and your 'submitting' yourself to becoming his altar-boy. I think a 'castrato' would be a most suitable choice for the part, dont you think? Tell me, have you been 'done'?

Thanks for the backhand compliment, Giacomo, but flattery will get you nowhere. To get to the point: have you swotted up on your Michael Apple and Stephen Ball yet? Granted that abuse has been rampant and far too much of it disgracefully swept under the carpet (including most recently at St John's College at The University of Sydney, though George has come out well on this one, in case you hadn't caught up with the news), who would have the money to buy the Catholic school systems out, given that the post-statist policy mode is to franchise out so much of our public education responsibilities to non-government providers?

Much the more sensible thing to do is to fully-fund all providers who meet public provision accountabilities equivalent to state schools, including abolishing fees, thereby containing the 'Roman' sexual excesses that so intrigue, fascinate and preoccupy you ( is it your castrato status, despite your being 'done' in the service of the Lord, to blame for this, I wonder? Were you taken, so to speak, unawares?) while withdrawing funding from those who wont tender such assurances. (It would give an entirely new policy boost to the term 'Withdrawal method', don't you think?)

As for singing, Helen could throw in a few bel canto lessons for a small fee, I'm sure. From memory she once gave a coloratura recital at an Education Conference at La Trobe for three hours without drawing breath. Like you, and unable to withstand the Wagnerian onslaught, everyone 'submitted' and a lasting peace was brokered. Surely resolving the state-aid crisis once and for all couldn't be as difficult to achieve, given that such an arrangement holds good for most of the OECD!

PS. Enjoy the NZ mussels.