Posted Sep 23, 2007 1 comment

I've been enjoying the study of history a great deal lately. 100 years ago, most humans were totally unaware of the concepts of "public relations," "disinformation," or "plausible deniability." The history books reflect that, and offer a generous amount of information about the mechanisms of social control. It's amazing how honest people will be when they don't imagine anyone would disagree with them. One of the best recent examples I've found is Susan Wright's paper "Australian Schooling: A History of Social Control".

In late Georgian and early Victorian years there was a prevailing belief and fear of a "criminal class" which contributed to the introduction of transportation. It was hoped that the entire criminal class could eventually be shipped off to a far off colony which would serve as a gaol of no return. Along with the 1500 adults of the first fleet were 50 children. Only three of these children were convicts but sixty percent of them were the children of convicts. The position of the convicts' children was an unusual one in that they were free but lived under convict conditions and were treated as members of the 'criminal class'.

The behaviour and attitudes of most of the convict population offended the values of the ruling elite. Initially men far outnumbered women in the population and convict women were condemned by their middle class male contemporaries as "damned whores" despite the probability that only 20% of them were prostitutes before transportation. Women were actually included in the settlement plans to provide for the sexual needs of the men and so guard against 'unnatural practices'. They were therefore transported to be prostitutes and then condemned with that label. In many cases 'prostitution' consisted of co-habitating with one man as his wife without being married. Many convicts were unable to marry because they left wives or husbands behind in England with scant hope of ever seeing them again. Marriages required official approval. Most children were born out of wedlock and from an authority point of view, they were the product of prostitutes and thieves and it was prudent to remove them from the harmful influence of their parents and school them into more acceptable behaviour. By 1798 children as young as three were attending school and children were taught to read so that they could receive moral instruction from the Bible. This was the avowed purpose of schools.

In 1802 Governor King expressed concerns about the moral welfare of children born to convict parents and wanted to withdraw children "from the destructive connexions and examples of their dissolute parents." He was especially concerned about girls between the ages of eight and twelve and established an orphan institution to "give them an education to fit them for work and discourage them from prostitution". The girls were trained in the values of work, decency, cleanliness and modesty. Barcan argues that schooling was used to foster political loyalty to established authority which "was a natural objective when so many of the inhabitants of the colony were from the criminal classes and from the restless Ireland." This need was re-enforced by the convict revolt of 1804.