'In the story of the biggest school blow-up in Australian history, The Vetting of Wisdom is a gripping tale of a revered Principal-acclaimed nationwide as the leading girls' school educator of her day-loved and admired by all-but with a determined Presbyterian Church minority bent on getting rid of her. Following the formation of the Uniting Church in 1977, the continuing Presbyterians seized PLC and Scotch College from what they saw as the wreckage of Church Union and sought to cast the premier girls' school in their own church-focused image. They were met by court cases, parliamentary fiats, outraged parents, storms of mail, fiery Council debates, packed public meetings and a voluminous, disbelieving press. But after years of bitter protest, Joan Montgomery eventually fell only to be replaced by PLC's first male headmaster in 47 years. For Kim Rubenstein, a former PLC school captain and now with her own brilliant career, it was her first experience of power trumping reason. In the busy years since school, she has often puzzled over what made Montgomery such an inspiring role model for PLC girls and what, in the end, made Joan's detractors think otherwise. The Vetting of Wisdom: Joan Montgomery and the Fight for PLC is the careful piecing together of this puzzle.' (Publication summary)
'How a distinguished educator fell victim to church politics and personal enmities'
'Kim Rubenstein’s biography of Joan Montgomery, the venerable former principal of Melbourne’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College (PLC), has been thirty years in the making and is the definition of a labour of love. It involves Rubenstein, a distinguished and worldly legal scholar and human rights campaigner, revisiting scenes from her own life. She was a pupil at Montgomery’s PLC. As a first-year law student, she addressed the remarkable public meeting in April 1984 that opposed Montgomery’s defenestration by Presbyterian reactionaries, who were avenging the formation of the Uniting Church seven years earlier by asserting control over the school. Rubenstein’s subsequent career has been that of a distinguished old girl following the tenets of a liberal education.' (Introduction)
'Kim Rubenstein’s biography of Joan Montgomery, the venerable former principal of Melbourne’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College (PLC), has been thirty years in the making and is the definition of a labour of love. It involves Rubenstein, a distinguished and worldly legal scholar and human rights campaigner, revisiting scenes from her own life. She was a pupil at Montgomery’s PLC. As a first-year law student, she addressed the remarkable public meeting in April 1984 that opposed Montgomery’s defenestration by Presbyterian reactionaries, who were avenging the formation of the Uniting Church seven years earlier by asserting control over the school. Rubenstein’s subsequent career has been that of a distinguished old girl following the tenets of a liberal education.' (Introduction)
'How a distinguished educator fell victim to church politics and personal enmities'
