A Quick Note on Marty and the Media

I’ve pondered doing this post a few times, at various stages, but it felt like it would be grandstanding and so I left off. I’ll do it now.

I started this blog in 2017, after Burkard and I had ended our various popularising activities, and after I’d had enough of the MAV (and vice versa). Things in Australian maths education were, and are, an unmitigated mess, and the MAV and everyone didn’t want to know about it. The blog was an easy way to state easy truths, which no one else had a mind to say. There was no intention other than to say what I thought, with no sense that it would do any good other than to make me feel a little better. A couple years ago, that began to change.

With ACARA’s national curriculum debacle, and with me and my blog being part of the mathematicians’ rebellion, I began to be part of the story. I began to irritate people and I began to be read by and to have contact with journalists. That continued, on a larger scale, with VCAA’s 2022 and 2023 exam screw-ups. It is pleasing now, of course, to not simply be yelling at clouds, but it also makes matters confused and tricky. I have too many hats.

Now, at times, people tell me things and people ask me things. In particular, journalists will wander through the blog for juicy angles, or ask for comment. On more sensible occasions, I will talk at length to journalists and will review their drafts, for accuracy of quotes and for general accuracy. Mostly journalists have been respectful and appreciative; less often on point and accurate. None of this is appropriate for me to write about and none of it will I write about.

Given I cannot write about this aspect, of me being part of the story, and others’ storytelling, it seems worthwhile making a couple points clear:

*) I respect all confidences, always

I have had many interesting conversations over the last few years, some clearly off the record and some impossible to classify. But, if there is even a hint of confidentiality about what I have been told then I will treat it as absolutely confidential.

I am always in the midst of battling with education authorities, and I must respect those processes and the people involved, even if those people have not always respected me. Things become news, and sometimes, as with Deloitte and Bennett, there is a compelling reason to write on it. But confidences stay with me.

*) I never approach journalists.

I will always try to help journalists who request it, but I never go to them, wishing or pitching them to do a story, or for any reason whatsoever. I will read drafts if given a chance, critiquing statements and angles, but I will not seek for a story to be written, or for it to be written in a certain way.

*) The only mouthpiece for me is me.

I have a small platform with this blog, but it is platform enough. If I want to say something, I am quite happy to say it here. Obviously. If I haven’t said it here, the odds are I don’t want to say it and/or don’t believe it.

[minorly updated, 18/07/24]