Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was out and about last week trying to plow fertile ground in the Adelaide hills and raise up the best xenophobic crop of 2010.In the process he once again came face to face with alleged Holocaust-denier Gerald Federick Tobin.
Given the rich mine of embarassing achived material from his university and journalism days, it was rather surprising to find his somewhat sympathetic 1987 Bulletin magazine article on Toben contained no over the top right-wing judgments of Australian society which might come back to haunt him.
It seems a restrained and relatively balanced Tony Abbott may once have existed in an alternative universe....
Case of the teacher who wasn’t kept in
Tony Abbott, The Bulletin, 1987
Doctor Fredrick Toben has achieved what many thought impossible. He has been sacked for “incompetence” as a teacher in an Australian school.
Despite the quoted desire of NSW Education Minister Rod Cavalier to weed out “malingerers in the staffroom”, dismissal is not a threat our teachers normally face. Educators contacted by The Bulletin said that any dismissal was rare and dismissal for alleged incompetence almost unknown. The picture which emerges is of teaching authorities who take a benign, almost parental view of their employees’ failings.
Most teachers dismissals follow significant criminal convictions. Others occur only after the failure of an elaborate counselling process. In Australian schools, complaints against teachers are normally handled by principals. If not resolved, they are referred to the department of education.
The Victorian Ministry of Education, which employs 55,000 teachers, dismisses “three or four” for incompetence each year - usually when “an element of senility” is involved. An official of a Catholic education office in Victoria, employing about 1000 teachers, said that he had “never written a letter of dismissal”.
As a spokesman for the NSW Education Department - which employs nearly 48,000 teachers and has dismissed “a very few” - put it: “If someone has successfully passed teachers college, there are usually personal reasons for sub-standard performance…Quite often, with a particular group, a person may not feel comfortable…We would usually transfer such a person to another school where there was more motivation and security…”
Only when subsequent inspection shows no improvement and when a teacher declines to resign, may formal disciplinary proceedings be instituted - possibly leading to dismissal. Most teachers resign at this point. Fredrick Toben stubbornly refused because he had done nothing wrong.
Toben’s troubles began in 1983 when the Goroke Consolidated School principal, Ray McCraw, withdrew approval for his permanency application. McCraw said that Toben’s classes had deteriorated.
Toben said that McCraw felt threatened by his qualifications - Arts degrees from Melbourne and Wellington universities, a doctorate from Stuttgart University and 17 tyears’ teaching experience in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
Goroke is in far western Victoria. In a small town, small school atmosphere, rumors spread that McCraw was unhappy with Toben. He became something of an outcast in the staffroom. Some pupils began to disrupt his classes. Victoria - unlike other states - has no provision for formal inspection of teachers thought to be unsatisfactory. Toben asked several times for inspection. Instead, in mid-1984, a “support group” was set up. It comprised McCraw and three other teachers as well as Toben’s nominee, fellow teacher Glenn Duncan. After four weeks’ observation the group agreed that Toben’s classes were unruly and that his teaching methods were inappropriate.
Duncan - who signed the group’s report with some reservations - recently told The Bulletin that Toben “didn’t really get a fair go” and that his problems were the result of a “personality clash” with McCraw, compounded by philosophical differences, which had gradually infected the whole school.
Next, a formal inquiry was held in October 1984. It was conducted jointly by a union official and a senior officer of the Victorian Ministry of Education who wrote to Toben beforehand saying that the inquiry was "“act-finding, rather than judgmental”. Despite this, the inquiry endorsed the support group’s assessment and expressed a “strong preference” that Toben be “dismissed from the teaching service”.
Toben’s case was finally heard by the then Director-General of Victorian Education, Dr Norman Curry. According to Toben - and this has not been denied by the ministry - Curry said: “Give me a good reason why I should not act on the inquiry’s recommendation that you be dismissed.”
Normally , these hearings are quasi-judicial - both sides call and question witnesses. In his case, Curry questioned Toben and four of his supporters but Toben did not have a chance to question McCraw. Toben was not represented. On February 4, 1985, Curry informed Toben that he had been dismissed for “incompetence”.
Since then, Toben - who now drives a school bus - has been trying to re-enter the teaching profession. The ministry has said that it will re-employ him after “evidence of successful teaching”. But no school, so far, has been prepared tot ake him on. The Ombudsman has refused to investigate without evidence of “clear injustice”. That, however, is precisely what Toben hoped an investigation would determine.
Toben’s former union, the Victorian Secondary Teachers Association, told The Bulletin that correct procedures had been observed in his case as far as it was concerned.
A senior state educator, who requested anonymity....., admitted that “…it’s not a fair world…Toben was not the worst teacher in the system and there are hundreds who are the same…Toben may have been unlucky…”.
Bad luck or injustice? Professor Lauchlan Chipman, of Wollongong University, said that “even awkward and unpopular people have rights”. He said Toben’s case “typified the fate of the one-off model in Australia.
While school authorities are making determined efforts to lift teaching performance and elaborate procedures are in place to ensure that this does not occur at the expense of teachers’ rights, it would be ironic if one of the few sacked for incompetence turned out not to have deserved it.
Image from VexNews
2 comments:
As a personal friend of Dr Toben it's pretty clear to me that the charge of "incompetence" laid against Dr Toben is a cover for political persecution. Dr Toben's real "crime" has been always been the identification of the so-called 'Holocaust' as a fraud, a fabrication designed to allow the Mishpucka (the Jewish Mafia) to steal Palestine and practice their genocidal racism against the indigenous Palestinians, not to mention their apparent intention to destroy Western Civilization and throw us all back into the dark ages of 1000BC as their slaves. That's all that World Wars I and II were all about.
Agreed. I find it incredible that so many people are fighting the same enemy all over the world in various ways, and when you point it out, they laugh or ridicule, and continue to complain!
I think most people are afraid to actually look and see, because they are too proud to admit they are wrong, or were easily fooled by the jews. I used to "believe" what they said at face value. No more.
That's the only hurdle at the moment, and won't take long to overcome as more and more people start to lose their homes and wonder why their dollar buys nothing anymore.
The jews create fictional money out of thin air, and loan it to people at interest. The government allows this because they are there to safeguard the system and protect the bankers scam. The admiralty court system is there to extract money from people.
The only thing jews can do is force the people to accept the system by formenting terror and keeping people in a state of fear, backed up by their media.
Once this tactic comes to light, no matter what they try do, people see it for what it is. It's one big extorsion protection racket.
The holocau$t has been a very successful mind weapon on people (making the jews seem like endless victims), but it's wearing thin after hundreds of movies and constant whining by *survivors* who can't keep their stories straight, or conflict with physical evidence, and the truth is finally surfacing.
Any rational person can see there is something they are hiding. In fact they are hiding a mountain of truth from people. They are holding back incredible technology that provides free energy, so you have to buy it from them.
It's a race against time now for the jews to get their new world communist order, as the internet is smashing their lies daily.
For those that know nothing about jews, please take the time to learn about them, and what they really think of you.
Read in their own words what they have planned-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8bCRtoEfZY
Good on Fred Toben for throwing a spanner in their works!
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