History teacher with lifelong commitment to public education

BRUCE DENNETT, 1948–2024

A great teacher leaves an imprint on the world like a stone thrown in a pond, the ripples spreading outward and leaving a legacy that each of their students keeps paying forward throughout their lives. No teacher embodies that more than Bruce Dennett, who, over half a century of teaching, changed thousands of lives profoundly for the better.

Bruce Dennett was born in Newcastle on September 11, 1948, and all his life considered himself a proud Novocastrian. In 1951, his parents moved to Sydney, his father taking a job as a greenkeeper at Bellevue Hill Bowling Club to give young Bruce more opportunities – i.e. to avoid going down the mines.

Bruce was dyslexic and was set for a place at a manual arts high school after performing poorly in the Primary Final, but instead was sent to Cranbrook School after his mother took a job at the TAB to afford the fees. His early experiences as a student no doubt fired his desire to become a teacher and his lifelong passionate commitment to public education.

Bruce (left) and Jane Dennett (right) with Jimmy Carter and the late Rosalynn Carter.

At Cranbrook, Bruce blossomed in both academics and athletics, displaying his parallel gifts for running and for argument on the debating team. Many who in later years thought to engage him in discussion would not find it at all surprising that he was a star debater from an early age. From there he gained entrance to the University of NSW, where he gained a BA Dip Ed and then a Masters in Education.

His first teaching job was at Kogarah High School, where he taught history from 1972 to 1984. Here, he made lifelong friends in the history faculty, and one, in particular, proved the most important meeting of his life – in 1980, he met fellow history teacher Jane, and an instant spark led to a whirlwind romance, a wedding in 1981 and a marriage that lasted the rest of his life.

Many students of Bruce got to know Jane, either in person or through the huge repertoire of stories he had of their adventures together. These stories generally had two key characteristics: they were howlingly funny, and they made clear that Bruce and Jane were soul mates, and that he remained madly in love his whole life. It may be that Hollywood never picks up the Dennetts’ love story for adaptation to a major motion picture. Hollywood’s loss.

Right from the start of his teaching career, Bruce formed a running group for students, fuelled by his own love of running. He encouraged and mentored young runners, taking them to events around Australia and New Zealand. Many of the children who joined Dennett’s running group at school kept turning up in adulthood, joining the rest on the weekend to pound the pavements alongside their former teacher, whose fitness and indefatigable appetite for running was as marvellous as his appetite for life in general. To this day, Mr Dennett’s running group continues.

Passionate history teacher Bruce Dennett.

He was himself a supreme athlete his whole life, running marathons and ultramarathons. At the age of 62, he taught himself to swim and, two years later, competed in the World Masters Games. In 2000, he was given the Prime Minister’s Sports Award. Just as many students grew up with a passion for history or for teaching, thanks to Dennett, so did many gain a lifelong love of running thanks to his encouragement.

In 1985, Bruce moved to Baulkham Hills High School, which could be considered his spiritual home, and stayed there until his retirement in 2008. In the 1990s, he was offered the post of History head teacher but turned it down to stay in the classroom – he was there to teach and never had much interest in taking on the burdens of admin. Generations of students were the beneficiaries of that attitude.

Even after retiring, Bruce Dennett didn’t stop teaching. He taught trainee teachers at Notre Dame and Macquarie Universities and developed a course on critical thinking at the International Grammar School that he continued teaching until his death. He devoted countless study days to HSC students, often free of charge. But even outside formal educational environments, Mr Dennett was always teaching. Those lucky enough, after leaving school, to continue their friendships with him – and those were legion – knew that every time you spoke to Bruce, you learnt something from him. You’d learn about history, about philosophy, about politics, about life – if anyone could be said to have teaching in their bones, it was Bruce Dennett. He could not help leaving everyone he met wiser and more knowledgeable than they had been before.

As is the case with any good teacher, he was also committed to ceaselessly learning. He went about every area of life with insatiable curiosity, forever wanting to know more, to understand more, to open up more of the world to experience and savour. He was a veteran traveller, circling the globe with Jane. Never would he let the opportunity for a new experience slip, an inclination illustrated beautifully by the time in 2000 in the US, when catching sight of former president Jimmy Carter, he chased him down and asked if he could interview him. Nobody who knew Bruce would be surprised that he got that interview, too. In 2012, at the age of 64, he gained a PhD.

Bruce Dennett combined his passion for history with a love of sport.

Besides being the greatest of teachers, Bruce Dennett was an accomplished academic and author, writing many textbooks including a book on Aboriginal Australia co-authored with the eminent historian Henry Reynolds. This was a particular passion of his, and he was a long-time supporter and advocate of Aboriginal rights. Politically, Bruce was staunchly left-wing, an inveterate union supporter, and in all things a devotee and spokesman for the marginalised, the oppressed and the underdog. There was no trace of shyness in him when it came to speaking up for what he believed in – witness his pursuit of historian Keith Windschuttle in a Launceston hotel to argue with him.

The achievements of Bruce Dennett were enormous, and just listing them is enough to mark him as an extraordinary man. But to those who knew him, those who worked with him, studied under him, ran with him, spoke with him and loved him, it tells only a fraction of the tale. We knew a man of phenomenal intelligence as well as incredible kindness, a man as hysterically funny as he was dazzlingly insightful, a man who could command an audience as easily as any great entertainer, as well as being the best friend anyone could hope for.

We remember a man whose knowledge of history was encyclopaedic but who could talk, as he said, underwater with a mouth full of marbles on any subject under the sun, from ancient Rome to 1950s Maitland, from cricket and rugby to the Goon Show. It seems almost impossible that one person, in one lifetime, could have given so much time to so many people, but it would be a Herculean task to try to count the number of people who will tell you that without Bruce Dennett, they would not be the person they are today. None of them will ever forget his lessons, his stories about Grandma Dennett, his lust for life, or his endless generosity.

Bruce Dennett passed away on May 6, 2024, after a short illness. He is survived by his beloved wife Jane, his godson Nick, his in-laws, cousins, nieces and nephews, and countless former students for whom he was truly family.