Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

His marriage has broken up and he is on the dole. He applies constantly
for private school teaching jobs, but a 47-year-old who has been dismissed
for incompetence is not a prime contender for employment in these hard
times.
Toben spends most of his days enjoying intermittent custody of his 10year-old
son and preparing to represent himself in three pending
defamation actions against Victorian Education officials.
He and I have been penfriends, fax friends for several months. If the
Toben document archive grows much larger, I will have to move house. I
have avoided people like him for many years on several continents.
But no Ancient Mariner has ever talked as sensibly to me, and practically
nothing smells right about the Toben case.
It doesn’t smell right when I call a senior officer of the Victorian
Education Department, whom I know to have been centrally involved in
the matter for several years, and still to be, only to be told, at first, that the
officer recalls little of the past and knows nothing of the present state of
affairs - and subsequently that, on legal advice, neither the officer nor the
department will comment.
A strong aroma arises when one considers Toben’s background in the
context of his alleged incompetence. He has a BA degree from Melbourne
University and a PhD (in philosophy) from Stuttgart. He has 17 years of
teaching experience - mainly in New Zealand, Germany and Zimbabwe.
Perhaps the most crucially, Toben grew up in north-west Victoria and
attended a small country school like Goroke Consolidated. His father, an
immigrant from Germany, farmed nearby for 30 -odd years. His twin
brother still farms in the district. When he started teaching at Goroke,
Toben was offended by the principal’s contemptuous remarks about the
town and the district’s farm families.
Having set off with his brother for a European adventure when they were
in their mid-20s, Toben stayed abroad longer than he had intended. In
Zimbabwe, observing British expatriates, he realised to his horror that he
was, in his mid-30s, at risk of becoming like them - a man without a home.
He married the girl he had been going out with in Zimbabwe, and jumped
at the chance of a teaching job in Goroke, determined to establish himself
in a part of the world where he felt he belonged.
The Toben affair smells when one learns that 30 out of the 40 Goroke
parents whose children Toben had taught signed a petition praising his
work with them.
It smells when one considers how markedly different Toben’s teaching
philosophy is from the one that has prevailed in Victoria.
There is a stink around when a teacher union official publicly declares: ‘I
don’t think Mr Toben will be employed again by the Education
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