A journey worth revisiting

Vol 18. Number 01, January/February 2009

By Rebecca Perry

Music is often the soundtrack to moments in time - so in 1987, as the stock-market crashed, it's little wonder that Bon Jovi's 'Livin' on a Prayer' struck a chord.

Its optimistic theme of beating the odds echoed through Queensland, riding its own rollercoaster of changes as the then premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, lost his bid to become prime minister, thanks to the re-election of Bob Hawke.

In the midst of it all, a year into his posting as the state's Director-General of Education, was Ian Matheson - a firm believer of music's importance in curriculum, as well as the community.

It had been a long road to the top for a man whose passion for learning began as a boy at the Maryborough Central Infants School in 1936.

'It was a good school which met all the criteria, with good teachers who taught in a kindly way,' Mr Matheson said.

Mr Matheson's first teaching post was at Biggenden west of Maryborough, where he taught a composite Year 3 and 4 class.

Three months later, he moved several hours drive further west to a one-teacher school at Gurgeena, starting a string of transfers and perhaps igniting a travel bug.

While on holidays in Adelaide, he fell in love with a fellow Queensland teacher, Val, and they have been married for 54 years.

'I always vowed I wouldn't marry a teacher,' Mrs Matheson said, whose parents and three siblings were also educators.

'But then I met Ian, and I suppose it was just destiny.'

They travelled the state, had three children along the way, and made inroads into an often challenging working environment that only once paired them professionally, while Ian was principal at Jandowae State School on the Darling Downs.

'When he was the inspector of schools at Mackay, I avoided the staff room all week so people could say whatever they wanted about him,' Mrs Matheson said.

'At functions, people would pour their hearts out to Val, because she understood what they were talking about,' Mr Matheson remembered.

'We were once passing through Camooweal, on the border of the Northern Territory, and when Val popped into the teacher's residence to speak to the headmaster's wife, she gruffly said Val wouldn't know what it was like to live in a town like that.

'But of course, as Val assured her, we had lived in that very house when we had a three-week-old baby and as new parents were just as far away from support.'

Mr Matheson believes his family's first-hand experiences, strengthened through stints as regional director and in senior postings in central office, were a crucial credential as he climbed the ranks to director-general.

'I always told the minister that he got two DGs for the price of one,' he recalled.

'I never asked anyone to do anything that Val and I hadn't already done ourselves.

'We had both lived under same conditions as the teachers, so it made it very easy to understand the big picture.'

Painting an educational masterpiece, however, was another matter.

As departments started developing strategic plans, a swag of reports in the mid 1980s stressed the need to shift separate educational functions towards a corporate management style, streamline curriculum between primary and secondary schools and become more cost-efficient - priorities at both state and federal levels.

'At the time, our standing committee of Australia's education directors-general thought we had many great initiatives sewn up, including a nationwide curriculum, uniform school holidays, the same starting age for all children and the development of a wonderful science curriculum,' Mr Matheson said.

'But suddenly, governments changed and it fell into disarray.

'A lot of those same things are being talked about as "new" ideas today.

'Initially, it was a bit irritating, but now I can look at it with a strange interest, especially when I see good work in schools and know their roots are in the 1980s.'

With a recession on the horizon, then and potentially now, skilling young people through vocational education and training is a lasting legacy of Mr Matheson's reign.

So is developing distance education facilities through technology, which linked more with mainstream schools and, according to Mr Matheson, 'heralded a new era in parental involvement'.

For all the ups and downs, Mr Matheson, 77, says his time as director-general was 'very satisfying'.

'From the young kids in the office to the assistant directors-general, they all did their jobs very well,' he said.

'Other states would look at Queensland and say, "What could we do if we had a team like that?"'

Mr Matheson left the department in 1990 and later taught in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Queensland.

Today, with four grandchildren aged between one and 18, his education focus is now about the future.

Mr Matheson's simplest dreams are for youngsters to be literate and numerate, 'learning basic understandings in a pleasant and progressive way', but he fears for their safety.

'It sounds old-fashioned but I really worry about teenagers, because they are exposed to a lot more at a younger age,' he said.

'Schools can't leave lessons in behaviour too late, they need to be at age four or five so children understand respect, and that actions have consequences.'

He also wants to see more youngsters embrace the arts - and with education now firmly aligned alongside creative pursuits, he smiles in the knowledge that another one of his dreams has also come true.