Thread by @ChengxinPan

My own interest in Chinese politics was in part sparked by the woeful neglect of education & educators in the 1980s. I vented my anger in an essay 32 years ago. The simmering education crisis & sense of injustice foreshowed another much bigger crisis led by students in 1989.

I never thought I’d see another blatant assault on education in a different and far richer country 3 decades later. There’re many differences between the two of course and so I don’t know how today’s young students here feel about their government and their future right now.

But I'd be surprised if this didn't also motivate some to be more active and more engaged in Australian politics. After all, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is always interested in you. So it's now high time to study politics domestic & global as well as #hass

If anything, today's widespread injustice, inequality, intolerance & fear-mongering require more scholars, students & citizens with critical knowledge in #hass, not less. But that's perhaps the very reason why the ruling class fear such education & seek to structurally weaken it.

Appeal to ruling elites on the basis of job relevance of arts degrees is thus unlikely to be effective. They already know it (they themselves have benefited from such education). This is not about jobs per se; it's about politics & hegemonic reproduction of compliant citizenry.