It is perhaps possible to find remnants of this original intention in the work,which begins and ends with Lee reflecting on her intellectual pilgrimage to Oxford University. Captivated by the wonder of the centuries-old institution,Lee felt as if “finally seeing Disneyland”. But she was also burdened by her belief in the traditional trappings of intellectual success,wondering why she is not as smart as her friend Damian (a Rhodes scholar).
She read Virginia Woolf’sA Room of One’s Own while walking the same paths that Woolf herself walked a century before (in itself a marker of privilege),but then spends the rest ofWho Gets to be Smart unpicking her own assumptions and biases. A key moment? When Omid Tofighian,translator of Behrouz Boochani’sNo Friend But the Mountains,tells Lee academia is “second only to Manus prison in terms of being the most violent and cruel institution I have ever encountered”.
And from there Lee’s exposé begins. Using Oxford and Woolf as a starting point,she makes the reader consider the brutality of the colonial legacy and the insidious nature of institutional elitism. And what does this have to do with education in Australia? Education is a “rare and expensive passport”,a privilege kept for the few. And when you consider the decision-makers governing the education system and dare to follow the money that keeps them there,you realise it has everything to do with education and institutional power in Australia.
The body of the book – and why this work could not be contained in essay form – is the research Lee compiles to make her case. She tracks the Rhodes Must Fall Movement,a push to remove statues of Cecil Rhodes – the colonial white supremacist who paved the way for the trade in blood diamonds and established an international scholarship to keep his ideals alive – from elite institutions around the world.
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She also unpicks the complexities of the Australian school system,as well as our universities. Alarmingly,Lee tracks the flow of money. She draws links between people and agendas,and outlines who gets paid to do what. This investigative approach reveals a complicated and troubling mess,at the heart of which is the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. The Ramsay Centre,established in 2017,is an extraordinarily well-endowed Australian institution that thinks the West is better than all the rest. Go on,Google it. Lee is daring you to.