Oct 2, 1999 - mile gate on the rabbit-proof fence prior to her entry to College. Her story describes the isolation and the generosity of country people -as well ...
AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM STUDIES ASSOCIATION BIENNIAL CONFERENCE
University of Western Australia, Perth 30th September-2nd October 1999
"Well, you have to put up with that because the work was more important": Women teachers a*nd the New Education in Western Australia Janina Trotman School of Education Edith Cowan University, Perth
Associate Professor Lynne Hunt School of Health Studies Edith Cowan University
Introduction
... gender has always been central to the organization of schooling and the national conversation regarding education (Pinar, W. William Reynolds, Patrick Slattery & Peter E. Taubman,1995, p.359)
In Western Australia, at the turn of this century, we embarking on a massive project of curriculum change. In Western Australia, at the turn of the last century, Cyril Jackson, the dynamic, young Inspector - General of Schools also embarked on a project of curriculum change. His reforms to the elementary school curriculum were concerned not so much with content as with pedagogy. The New Education, as it was called , drew heavily on Froebel, Herbart and Pestalozzi and emphasised a developmental and child -centred approach, which, it was argued, would lead to a life-long love of learning. Its guiding principle was that the elementary school should be a basis for future self education. This objective was best achieved by cultivating the child's capacity for learning, not by plying him with the memorization of facts which were soon forgotten but by developing in the pupil an intelligence and an alertness of mind Turney, C. (1972, p.250)
Jackson pursued the implementation of the revised curriculum with characteristic zeal. In 1898 the Department of Education started the monthly publication of its Education Circular and used this a means of disseminating information about the reforms as well as highlighting that these were subject to enforcement through the application of departmental
2 regulations. Significantly, school inspectors were to become the chief vehicle for reform.(Turney ibid, p.255) Curriculum is a much contested and variegated concept, but in this paper I shall take the position that affords the inclusion of both prescribed content and pedagogy as well as the tacit and unintended -the hidden curriculum. As McLaren (1989) argues: It is part of the bureaucratic and managerial "press" of the school - the combined forces by which students are induced to comply with the dominant ideologies and social practices related to authority, behaviour and morality, (pp. 183-184)
I would add that it is not only pupils who are induced to comply by these combined forces, it is also the classroom teacher.
At this time in Western Australia, and other states, as well as in the growing public systems of education in Britain and North America, a gendered division of labour meant that most policy makers were male ,while the implementors, the classroom teachers, were women. Male administrators not only made the policy, but also supervised the work of teachers in order to ensure correct interpretation and implementation of prescribed curricula. So what was it like being a woman and a class-room teacher? However, scholars have also reminded us that classroom teachers are not only curriculum takers , they are also curriculum makers . Loosely coupled organisational forms have allowed teachers a degree of invisibility - much to the exasperation of would be omnipotent 'change masters'
This paper uses oral history data to illustrate how, women teachers in Western Australian schools, interpreted, and sometimes challenged and subverted prescribed curriculum content, practice and structure. Miss Annie Anderson recounts her determination to stop the Deputy Principal caning 'her boys' in the Eastern Goldfields of the 1920s; Mrs. Mabel Guy tells about her resistance to 'phonoscript'; Miss Evelyn Parker describes her dislike of the inspectorial system and Mrs Hilda Hearne gives us a vivid picture of the strains of teaching huge classes.
Stories from school Annie Anderson was born in 1892. She attended Claremont Teacher's College -the only teachers' college in the state -and started teaching in 1913. She retired in 1957. She had a long and distinguished career, including being the last Headmistress of Princess May Girls'
3 School in Fremantle, before it was amalgamated with Fremantle Boys' to become John Curtin Senior High. Here are some excerpts from her interview:' Well when I first started I was appointed to Beaconsfield Infants' School for a month because the teacher concerned was on Long Leave . During that month the headmistress sat in the room all the time. You can imagine how distressing that would be for a young student just beginning to teach. When I went to Boulder School I had a class of boys, seventh standard and eighth standard boys. I'd been in a girls' school and an infants' school and these boys were completely out of hand.-completely out of hand! The first day as I put my hat and bag on top of the cupboard, I felt a cane there . Well, that didn't mean a thing to me, I didn't have anything to do with canes, but the second day , the boys were playing up terribly as they had been all along. So to two of the seventh standard boys and one eighth standard boy , I said, "You go out into the hat room," and I put my hand up on the top of the cupboard and produced this cane. There was a dead silence in the room. I went out there and I looked at the eighth standard boy - he'd be about fifteen or sixteen -1 said, "Well, if you haven't got the decency at your age to behave properly, this cane's not going to do you any good. Go back into your class." And I said, "You two go back and behave as well." There was dead silence all afternoon there. We got the discipline. The next morning when I came to school, there was a lovely big bunch of flowers on my table. I didn't dare to ask where they came from. I just said how lovely they were and it was so nice to have them and I went and got a vase to put them in. We were good friends all the rest of that year with those two lots of boys. The First Master made a habit of using the cane. He said, "Oh it's good to cane someone to begin the day with," and I said, "Well, you can leave my boys alone." I said, "I can discipline them without the cane, so don't you cane them." He called them out to be caned just to sort of get the tone.
Edith Mabel Guy was at College in 1927 and 1928. She was a student at Ciaremont when Bill Rooney retired from his position as Principal and R.G. Cameron took the joint position of College Principal and Professor of Education at the University of Western Australia. Though she had to resign when she married ,she taught during the Second World War at King River, a small school near Albany. During my first year out I was filled with enthusiasm and dying to try all the things we learned in college. Golly, it cost me a fortune and when the inspector came, he was very pleased. I suppose I had things that nobody else had thought of. We did leather pokerwork. I used to send to Rose and Stams in King Street for two lamb skins, one green, one brown and they made a little brown rectangle and Other pokerwork was put little green leaves on. Then to do the pokerwork I made the little lamps that we were shown how to make in college: a little cigarette tin with methylated spirits and a hole in the top with a wick in it which they lit. The poker needle itself was a big darning needle put upside down in a pin handle. They heated the needle and did all the designs with that. Other pokerwork was done on cigar boxes, those wooden boxes which were rather nice and plentiful in those days.
1 The oral history materiaj cited in this paper is taken from a collection of interviews The Ciaremont Women's Oral History Project, which is to form the basis of a forthcoming book on the history of women teachers in Western Australia, edited by Associate Professor Lynne Hunt and Janina Trotman.
4 Another thing we had was bigger cigarette tins which we painted with enamel. We did sealing wax flowers on those; hot sealing wax was pressed and then with a little pen, pressed into shapes of flowers and things. We did pochettes. Instead of ordinary raffia, I bought coloured raffia and we made these little pochettes. And bag work. That was easier. We got sugar bags and did wool designs and made a sort of a bag out of those but I had all these lovely things. When the first inspector came, he was very pleased with the handwork. He was very kind to me all round but he congratulated me on the variety of handwork I had. He even talked about, "What about if I went to a bigger school and specialised in that sort of work?" I suppose most schools he went to for manual just presented him with the raffia. Anyhow I didn't go on with that because it was too costly. At the end of the year, for the parents' day, I asked the children to bring little pots of jam or anything and put a little stall thereto sell some of the things. The kids took home some of the things they'd made, but I put a little stall up. I had been secretary of the Parents' and Citizens' and gone to all their meetings and their little dances that they had. They used to make the infant room into a dance floor and someone played a concertina. I used to go to them very regularly. They said, "What are you going to do with the money from the stall?" I said, "Well I'll reimburse myself for what I have spent". I naturally kept account of what money I'd spent myself. "If there's anything over I'll put it into the funds." They declared me black because I was holding a stall in aid of myself. Strange people I have quite a long tale about inspectors. When I went to South Bunbury School my first inspector, Horry Thomas, gave me a very, very good report and I was quite happy. My second inspector came to me about the middle of the next year and he said to me, "I've had a very bad night. I've been bogged at Busselton (or Bunbury) and I haven't slept at all. I feel terrible but I've heard good reports of you and I've come to see. I think I'll have an easy inspection." From then on the whole inspection was an absolute disaster. First of all he said to me, "What method of reading do you teach?" I said, "Well I teach phonoscript" (which was the one we were trained to teach at training college; I never liked it). He said, "What are your objections to it?" I said, "Well the children can read quite difficult things but they can't comprehend what they're reading. It absolutely ruins their spelling." I just said, "I have to teach it but I don't like it". Later on I learnt that he was instrumental in introducing phonoscript. I think he might have had something to do with making it up in the first place. So that was not a very good move on my part. Then the inspector said to me, "I note you are left handed. Being left handed you should never have been an infant teacher." I said, "Why, what are the objections?" He said, "You've got four left handed children in the infants' class". There were eight twins in the class and with identical twins, one is usually left handed and one right handed. In training college we were told to test left handed children by handing them scissors and if they put their left hand out for the scissors and proceeded to cut with the left hand, there was no doubt that they were left handed; but this inspector said to me, " I don't believe anything you've told me. You will please write to all their mothers and find out if they were left handed babies, if they used their rattles in their left hand when they were in their prams." Such a lot of rubbish. So that wasn't a very good start. The inspector said to me at the end of the exam, "I've heard good reports of you but I can't see anything to justify it at all and I certainly couldn't give you your marks". By this time I was in tears and my head in the cupboard and sobbing away on a dirty handkerchief. He said, "All right. Now I'll come back in about September and 111 give you another try." So he came back in September. He gave
5 me, "good, very good and excellent", which was 83 marks out of 90. Then he put his arm around me and said, "Is that better dear?" I said, "Well it's very glowing, [ think it really might be a bit too glowing but thank you very much just the same". He was a bit of a ladies man. So maybe that was his tactics, to sort of run you down and then .... So I found inspectors could be bugbears. They were very powerful and your money depended on them. Everything depended on them . That's why they used to go really paranoid when the inspector was due to visit!
Evelyn Parker was also at College in 1927 and 1928 and taught until the mid 1970s. She also served on Subiaco Council for twenty- four years, including a three year period as Mayor- the first woman in Western Australia to achieve this position. We teachers shared some of the difficulties. At first I was a raw recruit. I was innocent and unused to things in the country. I was always delighted, when I was leaving the school to go home for holidays, if a fellow teacher from another country school got into my carriage with me and enlightened me on a point or two! When I first went out, I thought the district superintendents were there to assist, to help with things.
1 couldn't understand why I wasn't getting very good teaching marks.
On my first
holiday, going back in the train, another women teacher was in the carriage with me. We were alone, having a real old talk about things, and 1 told her about my low teaching marks. She said, "Oh, glory, you didn't tell him all the things that are wrong?" "Yes", I said, "I want to know". She enlightened me, "Well, that's what he writes down against you". My eyes and mouth shot open, "Don't tell me he judges me on that". She said, "Yes, he reckons you can't do it. Have you ever seen what he writes? There are all sorts of secret files. You never tell them anything you can't do, ever". From that time on, I never did; because they gave an efficiency mark at the end of the year and that depended entirely on their assessment of your work and if you couldn't do this or wanted help with that, you weren't considered an efficient teacher. I'm quite sure my honesty delayed promotion for three years before 1 realised what was happening. It never happened again. . Looking back at teaching, I resented not being trusted. Right through my teaching career I resented the Inspectors and Supervisors coming into my room to check up on what I was doing. They really weren't prying, just making an assessment; but to me it created an atmosphere of distrust and I resented it bitterly.
It even carried on to the day I retired.
Having taught for 40 years, the District
Superintendent came to my class in Subiaco and said, "I've come to have a look at your class for the last time". I said, "You can have a look at my class, you can do what you like with my class, but I will not be there. I am not going to submit to the last one". He was quite put out, poor old man. He was a very nice man too. I said, "No, I'm not. I've put up with it for 40 years, so why should I put up with it now. Never ever have I been trusted by the Education Department to do my job". Other teachers just accepted it as part of the system; but it must have been the Irish in me, I didn't like it.
Hilda Hearne started teaching in 1922, but had been a monitor in a 'bush school' at the 133 mile gate on the rabbit-proof fence prior to her entry to College. Her story describes the isolation and the generosity of country people -as well as some hair-raising tale of the equine kind! The farmer's wife, with whom she was boarding, asked,
" Can you drive a horse and sulky?" "Well," I said, "I suppose I can. I've never tried but I dare say I can do something like that." So on the Monday they showed me...oh, I think they showed me on Sunday how to saddle up the horse. So anyway, I managed to get the horse saddled up and in the sulky, and I had to take two little boys with me, and she said, "Once you get on the road you can't miss the school. It's about two-and-a half miles." So she said, "This horse quite easy in the mouth. You won't have any trouble." It was rather funny going home. I'd saddle the horse, and the moment the horse was in the sulky, he wanted to be off! Well, those two little boys... I managed to get up on the step of the sulky, hold the reins, but the little boys could never get up that way. The horse was going backwards and forwards, anxious to leave. I'm gripping him and holding him back and they had to climb over the back all the time. Once we'd got the two little boys in, he'd go for his life down the road.
Hilda's story details the hard work (and pain!) involved in trying to provide appropriate materials for art activities -an important feature of the New Education: I had to work terribly hard. I did a lot of charts and things after school. I used to coat brown paper black, and when the children did little pictures, some of them could cut their own work out - the Standard Two - but I'd cut them forthe younger ones, and they'd colour them in. Then I'd paste them all on the black paper I had painted. One day I couldn't get the ordinary black paint that I painted the paper with, so I bought some black hat dye. I didn't know that the bottom of it had a small mop attached to a wire from the cork. I got the corkscrew and pulled, and bash! Out it comes and whoosh! All the black stuff came into my face! And the whole of my face was jet black! I rushed to the nearest tap to wash my eyes and by that time it had all dried, nice and shiny, all over me. I was completely black! I hurried to my bedroom and fortunately the other teacher was handy, and I said "Bess, see if you can find something in the kitchen - kerosene or methylated or something, to see if I can get this off." So she brought both the kerosene and methylated, but neither worked, and I thought "What am I going to do?" I thought of turps, but there was no turps. There was only one little store, and that was a mile away. So I said , "Bess, bring me the sandstone," and I started to scrub and the sandstone took it off It was a dreadful ordeal. It took me ages.
.«
At last I got it off, but you can imagine my face-all bright red and shiny, and VERY painful. I had no face cream. I had facepowderbut no face cream. In those days, girls didn't use much make-up. In fact a girl who used lipstick or eye shadow, would be called really common and cheap, you know. You wouldn't...oh you wouldn't look at a girl who did that. There'd be no refinement about them at all. It was absolutely disgusting to use lipstick and eye shadow, but you would use a little powder and cream. Well, we had nothing, so I'd keep dabbing powder, because my face was so shiny, it wouldn't stay on. The next day I had to appear at school, and the headmaster kept looking at me when we went into morning tea, and lunch time. He was dying to ask me what had happened to my face, but I didn't tell him. Later, when in different schools: No-one ever liked the new headmaster. Not only in our school, but I mean, I'd heard about him and I had a Standard Two, and believe it or not, there were 72 children in one class! It's hard to believe! Of course I didn't know what to do. 1 was supposed to have a monitress now and then, but I hardly ever
7 saw her. So I'd divide them into three sections, the good the medium and the weak. Well, of course the good children had to help some of the other children while I tried to help the weak children, which meant, of course, no child was getting their needed attention. In my next school we had a lovely headmaster, but he left in my last full year there. The man who replaced him wasn't a particularly nice fellow. For that whole year I had 54 children. 1 did have a monitress to start with. There were twelve children who were really clever, so I thought I could get those twelve straight through to Standard Two in a year. So I grouped them separately, and having a monitress, I thought, well, she can take a bit of work. I'd only had her a month and she was shifted. I said to this headmaster, "How on earth do you suppose I'm going to manage 54 children?" "Well," he said, "you will simply have to , and that's all there is to it." So I did , of course, but it was a bit noisy now and then. But by that time I'd been teaching so long that I was doing two things at once. I'd be listening to the reading in one ear and marking, and keeping an eye on things with the other. I knew the reading books just offby heart. Well that's how you worked you see. Just about doing two tasks at a time, setting the infants to do plasticine or making.... I used to get them to roll the plasticine in strips and make little letters and words and all this kind of thing. I kept the whole class busy. However, I got quite a good report at the end of the year. He came to me and said, "I thought you couldn't do it." "Well, ' I said, "It's been a terrific effort and you know yourself, it's been noisy at times." You have to put up with that because the work was more important.
Setting the stories in the puzzle of professionalism and the prison house While preparing this paper, I was overwhelmed by both data and some exciting theoretical and methodological potential. I found myself wondering whether these women saw the radical possibilities in their actions and statements. Were they motivated by desire for professional autonomy, or contributing to the maintenance of their positions as 'subservient authority figures'? Steedman (1987 p.l 18) writes that: Teaching young children must always be , in some way or another, a retreat, from general social life
and from fully adult relationships. She also claims that the child-centred pedagogy of the turn of the century helped to construct the ideal teacher of the young child as 'the mother made conscious', this is the basis of prisonhouse metaphor she uses to describe what schools are for women teachers. At the same time, the administration of schooling was becoming increasingly masculinised and 'scientific'. The tensions and contradictions generated by these discourses are apparent in Western Australia during the 1920s. On the one hand the New Education promulgates a freedom and respect of individuality for children -at least in theory. On the other teachers are denied these in the administration and regulation of their work. Is it possible that we are seeing history repeat itself?
