The Australian Women's Register

Jean Blackburn speaks of her parents’ backgrounds which modelled her socialist & feminist views, how the contrast between her early public school & her later experience at a selective high school has lead her to advocate the critical importance of good quality teaching & resources in shaping childrens’ lives, why she was dissatisfied as a primary school teacher completing her matriculation at night school, her involvement in the Melbourne Univ. Labour Club later joining the Communist Party, how she majored in economics in 1940 becoming a research assistant for the Dept. of Economics, her work for the War Organisation of Industry as an economist giving her experience in policy advice, married in 1943 leaving work and had a child in 1945 moving to Adelaide, her involvement with Winifred Mitchell in organising the New Housewives’ Association to overcome isolation of housewives, how she educated herself as a feminist through the Public Library, her rejection of communism how she completed her Dip. Ed. in 1964 & wrote a book, seconded in 1969 by Peter Karmel as a consultant to the Committee of Enquiry into South Australian Education issuing the Karmel Report in 1973, appointed Vicechair of the Schools Commission established by Whitlam to improve govt. funding of schools, later retired from the Education Commission in 1980, how she in 1983 conducted a public enquiry into Victorian senior secondary education issuing the Blackburn Report in 1985, current educational issues.