Some chronology for John Joseph Ray

1969


A most scenic drive near where I grew up -- the road from Cairns to Port Douglas





My time as a High School teacher -- and a Doctorate

After I did my M.A. at the University of Sydney in 1968, I went to the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University to do my Ph.D. I supported myself initially by part-time tutoring in Social Psychology at Macquarie.

Later I had the idea of doing High School teaching to support myself. I had no Diploma of Education so the New South Wales Department of Education gave me the heave-ho but a small regional Catholic school (at Merrylands) gave me a job teaching economics and geography. The school was Cerdon College run by the Marist sisters.

Australia was so short of teachers in those "baby boom" years that my one year of Economics at the University of N.S.W. counted as sufficient qualification for teaching the subject at High School level. I in fact taught upper level economics, which was not far short of university level.

For geography I just kept a chapter ahead in the textbook. In my own schooling I had only ever done Junior geography. But my students all did well enough at exam time

Merrylands was a working class area but all my students eventually did well in their H.S.C. economics examinations. As I recollect, all my students passed their HSC and four got on to the statewide order of merit list. The Higher School Certificate serves as the university entrance examination.

Sister Aquinas, the Head of the school, was a very smart lady. I liked her. I wonder if her vocation endured. I see that she was still in the Marist Sisters order in 1980 so perhaps it did. I believe her birth name was Joan McBride. Her choice of her religious name suggested an intellectual orientation and I believe I saw evidence of that

In the photo below, I am the guy in the back row with the black glasses. I had more hair then. The photo was taken in 1970. The photo is of all the school staff. In those days Catholic schools still had religious staff, at least in part.





Studying for my Doctorate at MacU

I started at Macquarie in early 1969. My M.A. had not been formally awarded at the time so I could not use it as a basis to apply for a Commonwealth Postgraduate award. That came in 1970.

I moved from University to University for each degree as a way of broadening the influences I was exposed to.

Almost immediately after I got to Macquarie, I started writing articles for the academic journals. Two actually appeared in 1970 so had to have been written in 1969. That is the well-known "publication lag" for you.

When I was doing my Ph.D. at Macquarie university, I kept a fairly low political profile. I made no secret of my conservative thoughts but tended to present them in a humorous and self-deprecatory way so that it didn't put people offside. So I had a pretty normal social life for those two years.

So when I applied for a job teaching sociology at the University of NSW, enquiries were made at Macquarie and nobody mentioned my politics. So I got the job -- appointed WITH TENURE. So they couldn't fire me. The Sociology school was a hotbed of Marxism so it very rapidly came up that I saw old Karl as nothing more than an obsolete economist. Everybody was rather staggered but they were in fact pretty nice to me. I was certainly not included in a lot of things but I did get invited to some of their parties. They were generally pretty decent people. They were like theological students, actually. They read and studied their Marxist writings as avidly as fundamentalist Protestant Christians read and study their Bibles.

I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation in 6 weeks towards the end of my first year there -- but I had to wait the minimum 2 years to apply for the degree. And I eventually got around 10 published academic journal out of that dissertation, so that was unusually strong proof of quality in it. A Harvard doctorate takes around 10 years on average but I doubt that many of them generate as many journal articles



In my heyday, I was getting academic journal articles published at around one a fortnight. The academic average is around one a year. And I was up against the handicap that most of my articles drew conclusions that ran contrary to the accepted wisdom. So they had to be of a very high standard to surmount that barrier!

One of my minor regrets is the fact that I have not been given a D.Sc. It is not a regret that I go to bed thinking about, of course, but I HAVE had over 200 papers published in the scientific journals so I am qualified for one. But the D.Sc. (Doctor of Science) is an HONORARY degree. You only get it for being a good guy in some way. And I am NOT that. I keep saying things that upset the applecart -- even if they are also true things.

So,if I ever do get a D.Sc., it will be posthumous. That will do ME no good at all but it might serve to highlight my writings. I am a graduate of the University of Queensland, the University of Sydney and Macquarie University so those are the institutions that COULD award me a D.Sc.

Immediately after writing the above I re-read one of my favourite Bible passages: Ecclesiastes chapters 1 and 2 -- just to make sure I did not lose perspective.



Leslie Johnson

A definite lady that I met whilst I was at Macquarie was Leslie Johnson. I think I met her at the Baroque Music Club. She was 5'10" and a very nice person indeed. She was very slim, elegant, well-spoken and poised

She was a gentle, thoughtful person but with a good sense of humour. She had done very well in Philosophy III (topped the year, I think) at the University of Sydney, which is a major intellectual achievement. Her high level of education caused her to appreciate my high cultural level -- e.g. my desire and ability to make apposite quotations from Goethe, Chaucer etc. She was so thrilled to find a man who was both up to the highest intellectual standards and yet not a nerd that our eventual breakup was particularly hard for her.

I remember sitting on a bench with her overlooking the Lane Cove river on a calm moonlit night. An appropriate poem by Goethe came into mind -- Meeresstille -- so I recited it (in German) right down to "reget keine Welle sich". I suspect that I did it rather theatrically but it elicited great approval anyway.

A curious thing about her was that she was urged to take Philosophy honours but felt that she should not because it would alienate her from men. (At that time she just wanted to start a family). She was probably right. She therefore much appreciated it that I also had also done a fair bit of Philos. (Philos. I at Uni Qld and "General Psychology" as part of my M.A. at the University of Sydney) and I was so far from being intimidated by her that I was actually dominant over her.

She did eventually became an academic and I still see the occasional article by her in the journals. I think that she eventually made her career as an Educationist but she also seems to have managed to become a Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Technology, Sydney! She really was an extraordinarily fine woman.

Anyway, I enjoyed the quiet, intellectual sort of times Leslie and I used to have together but maybe she was a bit TOO quiet and reserved for me. It would have been a lovely calm life if I had stayed with her, though.



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E.&O.E.

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