From the maelstrom of the Depression and World War II, fromCommunist Party membership in the 1930s-1950s, and early attachment to thefeminism and peace, Jean Blackburn emerged as a significant publicintellectual. Her life work was the attachment of education policy to thecauses of social equality and opportunity. She worked with Peter Karmel on themost significant government report framing school policy in the twentiethcentury, the blue-print for the Australian Schools Commission.

Blackburn was the architect of the Disadvantaged Schools Program,which revolutionised the way that public and Catholic schools deliverededucation to families marked by many disadvantages, including poverty. She wasan architect of the Girls, School andSociety report of 1976. Jean Blackburn possessed a charismatic presence,never more in evidence than as she worked on senior secondary school reform inVictoria in the 1980s. As a feminist Blackburn bridged the generations. She wasa fiercely independent, courageous, creative and effective social reformer andpublic intellectual.