He read quite widely but was still trying to convince himself that God was good. My own reading was undirected growing up we were a family of tradespeople and only my father read. ‘I want students to read Young Dark Emu, not to vindicate my own opinion but to raise a platform for vigorous inquiry and generous doubt.’ Photograph: Vicky Shukuroglouĭoubt is just another word for investigation, the application of intellectual rigour, the wrestle of the mind with difficult concepts, the desire to make the world a better place rather than meekly accept the word of the more fiscally energetic. I want students to read Young Dark Emu, not to vindicate my own opinion but to raise a platform for vigorous inquiry and generous doubt. We don’t need the kind of doubt that cripples us into inaction, but the kind that inspires generous thirst for investigation. By the time elders had drilled it back in, years after I left university, I began using the greatest research tools of all: curiosity and doubt.
When I was told at school that Aboriginal people were wanderers and the most backward people on Earth, I was ashamed rather than rebellious. We need our children to consider the orthodoxy of the world, and examine it for its merit. We need our children to care about the planet like those who have saved the whales for the enjoyment and reassurance of all. If we don’t encourage them to demonstrate or protest, then we need to instil the wisest of all our skills in our children: doubt. We need our children to rebel – not necessarily by chanting platitudes or yelling into megaphones, although the whales were saved by such methods.
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