Making a Stand: Poems, illustrated by Maureen Prichard (Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2015) Preface by Dr Jennifer Strauss, poet, academic, Monash University.
Launched by Professor Ian Chubb, Australia’s Chief Scientist, at the Flinders University City Gallery. “The poems in ‘Making a Stand’ demand our attention. As contemporary as the daily news cycle, they treasure the past, predict a future of consequence. Responding to government ministers, media commentators, scientists, artists and more. Erica Jolly’s language rings with both emotion and sharply honed critique. It refuses to be silent in the face of injustice and inequity. This powerful voice for inclusion lures us in, encourages us to consider our position, urges us to make a stand for a fairer, more civil society.” Ian Gibbins, Emeritus Professor of Anatomy, Flinders University.
Challenging the Divide: Approaches to Science and Poetry (Lythrum Press, Adelaide, 2010) Launched by Robyn Williams, presenter of the ‘Science Show’, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National, at the State Library of SA. “Ever since Descartes there has been a vigorous debate about the separation of mind and body. ‘Challenging the Divide’ argues against dualistic views and proposes a re-engagement and cross-fertilization between the ‘sciences’ (rational supposedly dispassionate thought) and ‘poetry’ (the arts and felt thought and emotions.) Contemporary scientists and poets offer their views on how both modes of thinking inspire and inform their work.”
Australian scientists and poets have contributed essays and poems, and the work of international writers such as Lewis Thomas, Miroslav Holub and Primo Levi is discussed. As Nobel Prize-winning Professor Peter C. Doherty says in his contribution to this book, ‘ The more that we can do to give our young people a solid acquaintance with both the sciences and the humanities the better our society will be.’
Pomegranates: Poems , illustrated by Maureen Prichard. (Lythrum Press, Adelaide, 2003) It was launched at the SA Writers’ Centre by Elizabeth Mansutti, author and children’s television producer of ‘Mulligrubs”, In 1998 Erica Jolly heard Sister, Veronica Brady present the Investigator Lecture, entitled Politics, Passion and Poetry at Flinders University. Author of Caught in the Draught: On Contemporary Australia Culture and Society (Angus and Roberston, Sydney, 1994) and biographer of the Australian poet Judith Wright, Sister Veronica Brady wrote: ‘Judith Wright has been a major influence on Erica Jolly’s approach to life since she discovered Wright’s poetry, after her return in 1968 from teaching in England. Sister Veronica Brady, speaking of the need for love, continued her lecture with the following words: “But we will have room for it perhaps when we are able to walk around inside ourselves, having found a language of the self and learned to live with our mistakes and to forgive ourselves and one another. Poetic language may make this possible and it may open out a different kind of political landscape.’ ‘Pomegranates’ is Erica Jolly’s contribution to that ‘different kind of political landscape.’
A Broader Vision: Voices of Vocational Education in Twentieth-Century South Australia 1897 -2000. (Michael Deves Publishing, Adelaide 2001 – later Lythrum Press, Adelaide) pp 886. Index curriculum- based.
Launched in the Thebarton Senior College by Professor Gus Worby of Flinders University, this collection of voices of students, parents, lecturers, Directors of Education, has an Appendix 1, by Dr Denis Grundy, Senior Lecturer in the Flinders University’ School of Education: The Challenge of Universal Secondary Education. Dr Grundy died before the book was launched. Of the book Dr Kay Whitehead, School of Education, Flinders University, wrote: This book is unusual in that it is a history from below which contains the voices of ordinary people (students and teachers) rather than administrators and policy makers. Such social histories are rare in South Australia and, indeed, in Australia generally.’ [Reviewed by Dr Margaret Secombe, University of Adelaide.]
The Head Master of Thebarton Boys Technical High School, A.S. Paull, focusing on the self-directed learning of the Dalton approach encouraged by the school, in 1930 quoted Aldous Huxley. [In 2019, with the state of democracies, I think it worth repeating. ] “Too much stress is laid on teaching and too little on active learning. The child is not encouraged to discover things on his [or her] own. He learns to rely on outside help, not on his [and her] own powers, thus losing intellectual independence and all capacity to judge for himself [and herself]. The over taught child is the father [and mother] of the newspaper-reading [social media reading?] , advertisement-believing, propaganda-swallowing, demagogue-led man [and woman] – the man [and woman] who makes modern democracy the farce it is.” Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World.
We Came to Marion: A Collection of Voices Celebrating Forty Years in the life of of Marion High School from 1955. (Flinders Press, Adelaide, 1995). Named a ‘lighthouse’ school for South Australia by the Federal government in 1985, the book was launched by Lea Stevens, Minister for Health in the Labor government of South Australia and former Head Prefect of the school, in the Cosgrove Hall at Marion High School a year before it closure by the Liberal government. Elizabeth Mansutti wrote: In this brave bold book we are invited to share the memories of many who Came to Marion . This book is far more than a nostalgic resonance from the rosy corridors of memory, it evokes wonder at the power of an educational ideal believed in, insisted upon for the sole benefit of the students and worked for by a whole community.” pp346 with an index.
Help Yourselves: Food for Thought: An Anthology of Contemporary Writing on Food, compiled and edited by Erica Jolly and Frances Wells, illustrated by Maureen Prichard. (Education Department of South Australia, 1979.)
This book is here because the approach we took has influenced We Came to Marion, A Broader Vision and Challenging the Divide. We asked people from all walks of life. What did we have to lose? We could only be rejected. Proof of the generosity of people in a wide range of occupations, eminent in their field, is in the names that fill the book. The sections included ‘Correspondence’ with contributions from Garth Boomer, and Hugh Stretton; ‘Written to be Spoken’ with Robyn Williams who has become the heart of the ABC’s ‘Science Show’, In ‘Occasional Writing,’ the poet, Gwen Harwood. Among the writers of ‘Fiction’ Iris Murdoch! Such generosity from this great English novelist. This was a not-for-profit publication to help students and teachers recognise why writers in different spheres chose different styles for their audiences. There was science journalism, writing for cooking and, completing the ‘food for thought’ was a poem by the Aboriginal poet, Jack Davis. In The First-born and Other Poems (1970) ‘his lyrical style [was] matched by his intense awareness of his country.’ We were, even then, identifying the need for cross-disciplinary engagement. In this aim, we were supported by Dr John Steinle, Director of Education. However, the unfortunate fact is that interdisciplinary approach has been steadily undermined by academics and teachers and bureaucrats and politicians. It is as if C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” won’t yet die. Its adherents, still in 2015, wanted the supposedly traditional separation of subjects and students, evident in once separate schools thought appropriate for the ‘academic’ and the ‘non-academic’ in South Australia before 1970. [Those separate schools were replaced by comprehensive, for the most part, co-educations schools. See A Broader Vision.] In 2019 it is being perpetuated in the STEM / HASS content divide of the 2015 revision of the Australian national curriculum.
Sciences and Humanities 