When I was 12 it was the beginning of my first year at High School. I was given a watch for Christmas to mark this great milestone - laughable now in the days of cheap watches but it was a significant expense for my parents at that time. I was excited at the prospect of High School - a new beginning with new friends and activities and the opportunity to study languages and history and science.
My grandmother Alice turned 12 in 1902. For her it was a new beginning of a different kind. Like most Australian children of her class and gender at the beginning of the 20th century, finishing Primary School marked the end of her schooldays. She would stay at home, help her parents and eventually marry and have children. Indeed there was no institution in the town where she lived (Lismore, NSW) where she could have continued her education. The first High School opened there in 1920 and before that post primary schooling only became available in 1905 when the Lismore Public School became a "Superior School".
“Initially this was
done by extending the primary school into a central or superior school, that
was to provide vocational emphases in technical, commercial or domestic
economy, balanced with some features of an early general secondary education.
The objective was to provide preparation for semi-skilled work, vocational
training or a technical education. But the difficulties of imposing this type
of curriculum on schools dominated by the primary school curriculum and
teaching ensured that in most States the vocational aspects would be
surrendered inevitably to a general education, without sufficient or adequate
preparation in the new work skills. Agricultural education was to suffer the
most, but it was not alone, and gradually in States like New South Wales,
vocationalism in secondary education was subsumed by a general academic
curriculum in the superior public schools…
(Professor
Gerald Burke and Dr Andrew Spaull in AUSTRALIAN
SCHOOLS: PARTICIPATION AND FUNDING 1901 to 2000)
Alice's father was Robert White, an alderman of the Lismore Council who was later to advocate for the establishment of the South Lismore Public School and who held progressive ideas about many things - he was an environmentalist ahead of his time, and held strong views about social justice. He seems to have been aware of the frustrations of his bright teenage daughter. He encouraged her to become active in the Manchester Unity Independent Order of Oddfellows and she acted for many years as its secretary. Like him, she became active in the local branch of the Labor Party. In 1907, he proposed that she act as honorary assistant secretary for the fledging Lismore Hospital, but after much debate a man was appointed.
Alice married in 1911. Any ambitions she had were subsumed by the demands of her husband and growing family, but she was determined that her children would have an education. She went to extraordinary lengths for my father, who was also a bright child.
Fortunately Dad won a State Bursary at the end of his primary schooling which enabled him to go to High School and he did well enough at the end to win a Teacher Training Scholarship to the University of Sydney (then the only University in NSW). He wrote, " In my generation, there was little else that offered to a fairly bright student of limited means, I completed my High School career in 1930, in the middle of the Great Depression. It was always assumed in my family that I would apply for a Teacher Training scholarship because it was not much use thinking of the learned professions like Law or Medicine unless one could afford the fees and the living costs which, for a country boy, were an unscalable hurdle".
Alice arranged for Dad to board in Sydney with old family friends. His living allowance, which began in 1930 as 80 Pounds per year was reduced by the Government in the 1931 budget to 64 Pounds and then again in 1932 to 52 Pounds. This was really a starvation allowance but his landlady reduced his board to One Pound a week, and his mother somehow managed to slip him a bit extra occasionally. She was determined to see him through to graduation and the safe and secure job that would follow. At the same time, she steered all five of her daughters into various careers, including teaching and nursing.
Life was never easy for Alice. She endured many years of hardship and for several years was separated from her husband. Nevertheless she maintained a strong interest in politics and current affairs and was always keen to debate on many subjects. She was always proud of Dad, who became a successful High School Principal. She was proud too that many of her grandchildren gained University degrees and professional accomplishments.
We wonder what she might have done with our opportunities.
Alice as a young woman.
I now have Alice's Primary School certificate, dated 16 October 1903.
ReplyDelete