Michael came to Kelvin Grove in 1975, the year the College became a CAE, having done a one-year teacher training programme in New South Wales and taught in Papua New Guinea. He grew up in northern New South Wales. He took the second and third year of the teacher training programme here and then, when it became available in 1977, the Bachelor of Education degree.
From 1978 to the mid-eighties Michael taught English and was the school counsellor at St Laurence's College in Brisbane. He next moved into a SCAN unit at the Mater Children's Hospital, and from there went to the Queensland Corrective Services Commission, where he is currently a senior psychologist. Along the way he has collected two master's degrees in psychology.
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Interviewer: Let's talk about Kelvin Grove itself - the physical environment. Was it comfortable for you as a student in 1975?
Michael: We used to spend a lot of time in an old demountable that was so
close to the golf course you could hear golfers talking as they walked by. That was never a problem for me. I do recall the library as being terribly crowded.
For me, as for most of the other people, it was a really nice place to be. I really liked it. They let us have that demountable as a sort of a home room and we had tea and coffee-making facilities. The size of the place has changed - I go there now and there arc buildings all over the place. They had just opened that English complex, E Block, we had access to that, but the bcaut~ful library they have now doesn't compare with the old one. But those things did not worry me a great deal nor the other persons in my class. I just think that we really liked being there.
Interviewer: Now, you were updating your qualifications?
Michael: I had taken a one-year certificate course in Sydney, and taught for six years, before deciding to come to Kelvin Grove. Here I was taking the second and third year of a diploma and then spent one more year to get a Bachelor of Education.
Interviewer: Was what you were studying in those second and third years relevant? Did you find it good quality material?
Michael: Yes, with good teachers for the most part too. Some of the stuff, I don't think people doing education ever like. I mean really - maths curriculum -what can one say about a topic like that? Yet some people teach maths - friend of mine says that mathematics is something that should be done only by consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes! Generally speaking, the material we were taught - I thought it excellent. For example,
Michael Lannen
we were taught about MAC OS (Man-A Course of Study), which was later banned by trouble stirred up by Rona Joyner who had entree to Bjelke-Petersen at that time - those born again right wing extremists, they had it taken from the schools.
That course was part of the social studies programme; it contained a lot of anthropology. It mentioned, in general terms, things about family planning and I can remember it discussing how Eskimos traditionally left the elderly to die.
Interviewer: When you were studying the MAC OS course, were you aware that it was controversial or did it only become controversial later?
Michael: We could never work out what was terribly radical about it. I think it only became controversial later.
There was another thing that I was involved in that was banned. As part of an English major we had a theatre group doing a production of Lysistrata - it was to be put on in September as part of a spring festival, at sunrise and, I think, down at the golf course. It was just a bit of student nonsense, you know - who else but students would be foolish enough to get up and put on a play at sunrise? But it was too vulgar, far too vulgar for the fundamentalists like Mrs Joyner, and we were forbidden to stage it.
Interviewer: You must have been a bit older than the rest of your class?
Michael: It was never a problem. There were people a lot older than I was and there were a lot of people around the same age - I was only in my twenties. That was a time when there were a lot of older women back at Uni or Teachers' College.
Interviewer: Can you compare the teaching you had in your first year in your certificate course in New South Wales with the teaching you got six years later at Kelvin Grove?
Michael: Yes, the Kelvin Grove teaching was far more broad, far more an education rather than being taught. The Sydney course was preparing us to be teachers, whereas at Kelvin Grove it was a real education - it was interesting and it was exciting and the people who taught it were, for the most part, interesting and exciting.
Interviewer: And women get a better deal from male staff?
Michael: Indeed, they would tell you that. Female students would openly acknowledge that they would much prefer to have a male lecturer.
Interviewer: Are there any teachers that stick in your mind?
Michael: Yes, Peter Van Homrigh. When I first entered Teachers' College I thought psychology was terribly nebulous rubbish that one really didn't study. When I went into Peter Van Homrigh's psychology class, I can remember him telling us that he got into it by accident - someone was away and he was asked to step in and take over the course - and so he became a lecturer in psychology.
Dave Tulip taught us in science and used to take us on some fascinating excursions - I remember he took us to Coolum, a couple of time at least, camping and staying all night and that was fun. Peter Meadmore was a quiet person, kind and thoughtful, but he taught history of education and it really was not a topic that lent itself to much interest - "How many toilet blocks there were in State Schools in Queensland in 1956?" Really not the state of the art stuff!
Library staff were just dedicated people who went out of their way to help, find material, give extensions, assist, give you extra time- some would give students a home phone number so that you could ring them up
if
you were stuck in the middle of an assignment or you just wanted a little bit of direction. They were those kinds of people, very open.I will tell you something funny- Rex Doube was a rather elderly chap who taught modern Asian history. I was doing a paper on the "Effects of the Islamic Religion on Society". I had quite a few Moslem friends at the University and so I had entree into some of the Moslem literature and discussion with friends. Anyway, when I was talking about the effects of Islam on society I had mentioned (this particular class was very mixed, probably more females than males) that female babies were being circumcised and one of the people in the class quite innocently asked how one would circumcise a female. I started to explain and Rex Doube jumped to his feet and said, "No, no, no, I'm sorry, we can't really have that talk in this room in front of young ladies". And they all went "Oh, Mr Doube" and he said
"All right, all right, let's do this democratically-who wants the discussion to continue?" All hands went up, he said "Fine, I bow to the majority" and the discussion went on - how, why, and how revolting female circumcision was.
Now all the time Rex Doube sat down the back looking out the window, too embarrassed to look at the class. He came up to me later when it was over and said "Mike, that was very well done and one is never too old to learn.
Here I was thinking it would be out of the question to have a discussion like that with a class of young males and females - but I was wrong. The women were just as comfortable as anyone else. I was the only one who had problems because I am old".
That was a time too, when we used to go to demonstrations a fair bit - the right to march was an issue at that time, as was uranium mining.
Interviewer: These were demonstrations down in the city?
Michael: Yes, they were. We were the ones who used to chant "What do we want? The right to march. When do we want it? Now!" I remember Glenda Page, a lecturer in reading - marvellous, marvellous lady. She was close to retirement, always very elegantly dressed, and she used to go to demonstrations. We would be there wearing student-type things, jeans and long hair (mine was down to my shoulders), earings, moustaches -and she would be in King George Square, very nicely spoken and gentile, "lady-like"
in the very traditional sense of the word, handing out her own pamphlets, run off at College. She explained to me once that she could approach and be listened to by people who would not accept ideas from screaming students, and in that way could make her own statement, appeal to the middle class.
She was very anti-uranium mining and very anti- the legislation regulating demonstrations.
Student production of "Medea" in Victoria Park
Interviewer: Was there a check kept on whether you were in the classroom or not?
Michael: It depended on the lecturer, some used to mark a roll, and some didn't - in some classes there was an honour system. By the time I got there, morning assemblies, the Lord's Prayer, raising the flag, had all gone. But, you know, we did not skip out on classes very much. I don't think we wanted to - we enjoyed being there.
Interviewer: The material and the teaching was compelling enough to keep you there?
Michael: Yes, and lecturers all knew us on a one-to-one basis, so it just would not have been right to skip a lot of classes. Sure, you would skip the occasional one and I can remember that we sometimes spent the long lunch break down at the Newmarket [pub] having a few beers; and we would come back to class a little bit late and say, "Sorry Miss, the car broke down" - beer fumes everywhere! But generally speaking, people did not skip out of classes much. They liked it and I think we probably felt we would have let lecturers down had we not attended - they knew us all personally, so if you went to their room and said "Can I see you please?" they would know straight away who you were and what you were on about.
Interviewer: You obviously called Glenda Page, Miss? Miss Page?
Michael: No, no, that would have only been said jokingly. We were allowed and encouraged to call all lecturers by their first names.
Interviewer: You were studying at the same time at the University of Queensland - was it different out there?
Michael: Definitely, yes.
Interviewer: Are you saying that the quality of teaching at Kelvin Grove was better?
Michael: Indeed it was, it was very much better, it was good quality teaching-when I finished, I could have gone back and done it all over again, really and truly. The thing I liked about it was, this was the first time in my life that, as a student, I was allowed to express an opinion and the opinions were respected. Another thing, some years later I was up at Indooroopilly Shoppingtown one night and I saw Rex Doube, and I said "Hello Mr Doube, you won't remember me but ... ". He said "I do, Michael Lannen, I always remember my most outstanding students." I could have gone up to any lecturer a dozen times in one semester at Queensland University and they
would never have remembered that I was in their PY101 class - Kelvin Grove was different.
Interviewer: How much contact did you have with Dr Batsman?
Michael: A bit. He had a funny method and it did not take us long to work it out. He told us that he had an open door approach - that all we had to do was come and tell the secretary and he would see us. That was true, but I think you could almost set your watch by a life or death phone call that terminated the interview five or seven minutes after entering his room!
Interviewer: Let's talk about the Student Union.
Michael: It was a radical old group. In 1975 the President was a young woman who was a drama student and had been an Anglican nun. And there was a fellow named Greg- and he was one of the first people to come out of the homosexual closet - I mean he was quite public in his proclamation of his sexual preference. Which raised the issue of whether or not homosexual people would be registered as teachers - that became a big issue. The other thing was abortion - that was always an issue with the Student Union.
Although I was anti-uranium and anti-mining and pro-demonstrations and therefore considered rather radical, I am anti-abortion. On one occasion it was assumed I would be a safe vote in favour of funding a pro-abortion campaign - so when it came to the final vote and I did not vote the expected way, I was ostracised.
Interviewer: How big was the inner core of the Student Union?
Presumably all students belonged to it?
Michael: Yes. The executive meetings were held monthly and there would have been twenty to twenty-five people there, I guess - they were rowdy meetings with a lot of yelling, people actually throwing things, screaming and swearing-fun! There were lots of factions and they were very political.
Interviewer: Do you think they were real divisions or were they just the Jun of the debate?
Michael: No, there were real divisions there. I think traditionally humanities students are always considered a bit more radical, whereas the people who did phys ed, for example, were always the very conservative.
Interviewer: Yes. And the major issues confronting the Student Union were wider community issues or were they issues that really concerned you as students of Kelvin Grove?
Michael: Mostly, they were more directly issues that concerned the students at Kelvin Grove - but then they went out to the wider issues, such
as the right to march, abortion, uranium mining, those kind of things. You see, they were very conservative days in Queensland under the Bjelke-Petersen regime. I think that the Union was often a problem for Batsman because he wanted to be seen to be in control of the College and if the Union did anything to indicate that he was not he took it as a reflection on himself
Interviewer: Yes, the student movement was an embarrassment to the senioradministrations of tertiary institutions everywhere. What issues were debated in Council that were specifically related to Kelvin Grove?
Michael: Our funding and issues to do with things at the College, such as the library - the inadequacy of it - the lack of space available. Personally, as I said, I enjoyed being there, but I could see that space was an iss!le. Another issue was funding, which came from student fees to the Union - that cons limed Student Union time. Another community issue was the proposed rnts in funding to retraining on the NEAT system -we went to demonstrate on behalf of people receiving that support.
Now I had an agreenzent with my mother, who was, and still is, a very conservative sort of Catholic, that whenever she knew I was going off to a demonstration she would busily say the rosary so that 1 would not be arrested or harmed in any way. But on the day of the NEAT demonstration I forgot to phone her until the next morning, and when I asked how size was, 1 got,
Students, including a long-haired Michael, demonstrating against cuts to the NEAT Scheme Courtesy of the Sunday Sun Feature Service
"Well you might ask. Have you seen the front page of this morning's Australian?" - and she hung up. So I went and got the newspaper and there I was on the front page with a huge sign. Then of course I got the
"you-could-have-been-in-goal" lecture- "You promised that you would let me know so I could say a rosary to keep you out of prison".
Interviewer: But you were not in prison!
Michael: Without the rosary, yes, but she was not ready to concede that point. It was previous rosaries that had kept me out of prison this time.
I then went to Canberra with a group of other people to lobby and in fact that NEAT system was not removed altogether but replaced by something else, so those people did not lose out.
My other great contribution to Kelvin Grove - my one and only great contribution to Kelvin Grove - was getting cheap rail passes. Cheap rail travel was available to high school students and University students but not CAE students and no one had ever addressed the issue. There was a girl attending Kelvin Grove whose father was the then Transport Minister in the Bjelke-Petersen Government and I spoke to her and said "Look, why don't you speak to your father". And eventually she did and came back with
"Dad said to write him a letter". The upshot was that we got the concession.
Interviewer: You were there the year the College became a CAE and that brought in a lot of people who were not basically going to be teachers. Can you make any generalisations about the differences between the student teachers and students who were doing, say, drama, art, music, or dancing?
You obviously enjoyed the College, and found it stimulating.
Michael: Very much so. When they brought in the BEd I applied but didn't really meet the entrance requirements - and they were only taking twenty full-time students into that first intake. But at the last minute someone cancelled and the place came to me. It was a marvellous course too, the BEd, and it meant I could stay here another year.
Interviewer: How were you financing yourself?
Michael: I was getting an allowance called TEAS [Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme] and I worked at the "Top of the State", a big restaurant-cum-cabaret at the top of the SCIO [Sun corp] building; I worked there of a Friday and Saturday nights - waited on tables until the restaurant part finished, which was about llpm, and then washed dishes until 3am.
I had an old Honda motorbike and I used to ride that home in the freezing cold along Coronation Drive. It used to be bitter and I would wrap scarves
and things around myself and put on my crash hat and I would have my work clothes on and then a pair ofjeans and then a tracksuit over the whole lot - gloves and the whole bit! But then going along on that terribly cold strip by the river on a cold winter's morning at 3.30am, that breeze would find a way in somewhere. I had lovely old neighbours, a dear old couple, and when I would come home sometimes late on a cold winter's night, they would have a lovely hot dinner cooked for me because they knew I was a poor student.
We would come to my place, there might be three or four of us, and we would work all night on an assignment that was due in a couple of days time, and then people would just fall asleep and wake up and get stuck back into it again. We were all poor and we all shared.
I have still got most of my old Kelvin Grove assignments tucked away up there in my filing cabinet. I look back at some of the things that I wrote and occasionally read the comments that were written. Yes, it was a great institution and I really feel that I learnt a lot there. There was a lot to be learned and I think that it was taught well and it was a good environment and it was a great place to be.
This material is derived from an interview with Susan Pechey in 1990.