This post is a move away from telling the stories of my ancestors and other relatives and telling a little of my own story, focusing on my years in primary school.
The field of education, particularly early childhood education, has played an enormous part in my life. I thoroughly enjoyed my primary school experiences as a child and that shaped my choice of career in adult life. After I graduated secondary school, I went on to get a degree in education and specialised in early childhood teaching. I spent many years working in primary schools as a teacher, both in the State and Catholic education systems. I then moved to other roles, working in the field of learning difficulties and disabilities, before my retirement. You could say I've been 'at school' for most of my life!
My primary school life began in the early 1960s is a small beachside town named Bowen.
My first and only primary school was St Mary's Catholic School. It had been established by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1873, and was the very first Catholic School in the Diocese of Townsville.
At that time the population of Bowen was around 1,000. By the time I was ready to start school, the town's population had grown to around 5,000. That meant there was one class of each grade level and we all moved up together.
There were two primary schools in my hometown back then. There was the state school and the Catholic school, as was the case in many small towns across Australia. The state school kids used to call us "cattle ticks" (a play on the word Catholic!) and we used to call the state school kids "press-buttons" (apparently we thought they were all Presbyterians! Not sure why!) To be honest, there wasn't any real sort of rivalry, just a bit of name-calling on the bus as we headed home at the end of a school day. There wasn't a lot of effort spent on it at all, mostly because we were all neighbours in our respective streets and lived our lives side-by-side on a daily basis.
Grades 1 & 2 at St. Mary's in 1966. I'm in the third row, fifth from the left
When I started primary school back in 1965, my first classrooms were in an old wooden double-storey building across the street from our Church, commonly known as the Infant School, but it's correct name was Sancta Barbara Catholic School.
The Infants School, St Mary's, Bowen - photo was probably taken in the 1950s
So often, the milk was warm and not that enjoyable to drink, but it was a mandatory thing that all children attending school in those days had to have their daily dose of calcium. During our tropical summertime, when the mercury soared, our milk was often hot and the cream at the top smelled off!
In 1966, I was in Grade 2. Back then our school year was broken into three terms, with between 13 and 15 weeks per term. School holidays occurred in April, August and the the long school break was over December and January. (It wasn't until 1981 that the school year changed from three terms to four terms / two semesters.)
I would head off to school every day carrying my 'port', as my school bag was known as back then.
Basically it was a cardboard box with a handle, and it would develop rather a peculiar smell which was a combination of mustiness and the aroma of vegemite sandwiches!
There were two different versions of the school port. The one pictured here on the right, with a handle and two fasteners, was carried in your hand ....
... or there was the one you could sling across your back as it had straps to go around your shoulders.
I only ever remember having the one that had to be carried by hand.
Ah yes, vegemite sandwiches. The staple diet for any Australian growing up in the 1960s!
There was no other choice for a school lunch for me back then. It was vegemite on white bread every single day, always wrapped in baking paper ... no plastic wrap!
There was very little rubbish around our school yard, as the sandwich paper was all that was ever left at the end of lunchtime. Our school lunches didn't come in plastic packaging and there were no juice containers either. All we ever had to drink was water. We didn't bring drinks in our ports to school. Milk was provided, as mentioned, and water was considered the other drink needed during a school day.
Down the back of our school yard there was always a fire pit in an old iron drum. This is where all the lunch papers ended up and the fire would be lit after we had returned to the classroom once play time had ended.
No kid every went near the fire and I don't remember ever being warned not to get too close ... we just knew not to do it! This would never happen in any school yard these days!
I remember my very early school days being filled with nothing much more than the 4R's.
Only heard of the 3R's? Well we had 4!
We spent most of our time learning to read, to write and to do 'rithmetic, that's for sure, but there was an additional, even more important R ... religion. That took up a lot of time each and every day!
I remember clearly that any writing we did in the early years was done on slates.
I have very vivid memories of the smell of the rag we used to wipe the chalk from our slates! It was truly the most disgusting stink you could imagine!
We didn't use exercise books until Grade 3. I do distinctly remember bringing new exercise books and an art pad to school at the beginning of my third year and feeling very grown up!
We learnt to read from the Happy Venture Readers which were full of the really boring adventures of Dick and Jane, Dora (Jane's doll) and Nip (Dick's dog).
These were known as 'basal readers', grade-levelled books which involved teaching reading using a code-emphasis approach, otherwise known as a scientifically-based reading program.
For those of you who are teachers at the moment immersed in hearing all about the 'reading wars' that are supposedly raging, let me put it on the record ...
from someone who grew up learning to read with a scientifically-based reading program, and then went on to teach children to read with the updated version of it (only by then it was the Endeavour Readers with Pam and Sam, and Digger the dog and Nat the cat) when I began my teaching career in the 1980s, I can attest to the fact that not every child will learn to read in line with their peers, not even with such a program!!!
As we got up into Grades 4, 5 and 6, we would read from the slightly more exciting 'Wide Range Readers'.
Ah, the memories! The stories never did fire my imagination and some of them were downright nonsensical!
We learnt maths using bits of coloured wood called cuisenaire rods,
and we were indoctrinated with the Catechism of the Roman Catholic faith through books called 'My Way To God'.
I still have a few of them in my possession and occasionally go through them just to remind myself of some of the things we firmly believed when we were children.
One of the people who spent a lot of time teaching from those books was my Grade 1 & 2 teacher. She was a nun, and wore a habit every day, which was customary back then, even in the extraordinarily high summer temps experienced in northern tropical Queensland.
My primary school memories were defined by my Catholicism. Nuns and priests were part of our daily lives and most school events were tied up with significant rites of passage for young Catholics ...
- our first Confession (in Grade 2), which preceded Communion, was a very scary thing and to be honest, it was hard trying to think of sins to confess! There was basically a choice of four - lying, disobeying your parents, fighting with your friends or siblings, and not saying your prayers before bedtime.
- our first Communion Day (in Grade 2) when all the girls were dressed in white and wore veils and the boys wore white shirts with ties. I remember telling my friends how hard it was to loosen that thin wafer called a Host which got stuck to the roof of my mouth! It took me forever to pry that thing loose.
- our Confirmation Day when the Bishop came to town, which made it an extra special day! We got to choose another name for ourselves. It had to be the name of a patron saint who we wished to model ourselves after, and wished to place our prayers with, as they resided in heaven, close to God. I took the name of Cecilia, after Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. It didn't really help with my musical talents!
I remember receiving special medals on these important days and prayer books with a holy picture inside.
I also remember the time when I, along with my female classmates, became 'Guardian Angels' and got to wear a red cloak over our Sunday clothes once a month.
I can't recall the significance of this, but I distinctly remember walking down the aisle after the priest and altar boys, and then sitting in the pews at the front of the Church.
Afterwards, there were cakes and cordial as a treat outside the front of the Church. Back then you often spent time with your class mates on a Sunday outside the Church, after Mass, and there were usually treats for the kids and cups of tea for the adults.
I'm not sure any young Catholic today would know what a scapular is, or have any notion of how a Novena sounded or have attended the Stations of the Cross at Church. Some would possibly know what rosary beads are, but may not have experienced the hours of prayer we participated in when saying the rosary at school and at Church.
The scapular pictured here is the one I remember wearing as a primary school aged child. It was made of two square pieces of cloth with images sewn onto them, and these were attached to material strings.
There were rules to remember when wearing the scapula. You wore it like a necklace but you had to make sure one segment rested on your chest (near your heart) and the other on your back. You couldn't wear it all akimbo or there would be retribution of some horrible type.
Scapulars could not be worn until they were blessed by the priest and then you were expected to wear it all the time so that you would benefit from its associated blessing. If you took it off, then you weren't afforded that privilege any more. For those of us who wore them most of the time, I can attest to the fact that they would become quite smelly as a result of running around in the tropics and working up a sweat during summertime!
This is my Grade 3 photo, taken in 1967, and that teacher standing beside her class is the reason I went on to become a teacher myself. I have vivid memories of Mrs. West and her devotion to her class and her commitment to ensuring every child felt success in their learning. I always felt as if she truly cared for all of us and really knew us as individuals. She was what was referred to as a 'lay' teacher - not a member of any religious order - and she was to be our teacher for Grades 3 and 4.
During the years in Mrs. West's class, there were some other more interesting things added to our week's learning. We got to do artwork, mostly drawing with craypas.
We also learnt how to draw the country of Australia free hand. Yes, I remember we were tested on this at the end of the year and we were expected to create something that looked exactly the same as the chart that hung on the wall.
It took a whole lot of practice!
We were taught how to sew selected types of stitching ... things like blanket stitch and cross stitch. I was pretty good at it, but I can't remember what ever happened to my samplers, so I obviously wasn't all that proud of my work.
In 1969 I was in Grade 5, and by that time we had moved from the Infant School to the other school building, known as St Mary's School, which was on the other side of our Church.
It was a more modern building, just one storey with a covered hall section at one end and three classrooms at the other end for Year 5, Year 6 and Year 7. In those days, unlike the present day, primary school ended at Year 7. (Today Year 7 is the first year of high school!)
My Grade 5 teacher was a nun named Sister Bernadette (to whom I felt a certain fondness given that we had the same name and she was a kind-hearted person). She introduced our class to lots of musical experiences. We spent quite a bit of time in that covered hall rehearsing songs for various concerts held throughout the year, and I fondly remember learning the words for "The Happy Wanderer". Who could forget the chorus of that? "Val-de-re, val-de-ra. Val-de-re, val-de- rah, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Val-de-re, val-de-ra. My knapsack on my back!" Really meaningful stuff.
Of course there was one event that will forever be etched in my memory. A television was wheeled into our classroom one day in July. Now, given that we didn't even have a television at home ... it wasn't an ordinary part of my family's life back then ... this was such an exciting thing!
Up until that point, my experiences with watching television were very limited. My family would go into town on a Saturday night to listen to the Civic Band or just to wander up and down the main street. Part of the night's entertainment involved stopping and standing in front of the window of the electrical appliance shop. They had a television in the front window and it would be turned on so people could watch for a while. Of course, you couldn't actually hear anything, but watching was enough.
So when a television on a trolley was wheeled into my Grade 5 classroom, I knew something momentous was about to happen. Thinking back now, it was one of those awesome moments of wonder and awe that make us question everything we know about ourselves and our world. I remember distinctly thinking that my life might actually turn out to be bigger than just a life in my hometown.
Grades 6 and 7 were spent with another very influential teacher, Mrs. McKenna. I remember her as being quite strict and proper, but she opened a whole new world of knowledge for us. Up until that point, we could tell you a lot about Australia ... its convict and Federation history, its states and their primary industries as well as geographical features; but Mrs. McKenna taught us about interesting places elsewhere ... like Europe and South-East Asia, places I'd never really heard about before. My world up until that point had been very small indeed!
I become a teacher myself and have now had a career in education for over 40 years. Having recently retired, I look back with interest on how things have changed.
The last primary school I worked at was so vastly different from the primary school of my childhood, but of course, so it should be.
The face of education has changed significantly and the memories I've spoken about so far are from a time when students sat in rows, didn't have much of a voice and received an education that really didn't prepare us for our adult years, apart from giving us some basic literacy and numeracy skills.
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