Education

It is interesting to see how approaches to education can change over the years.  It was common for our parent’s generation to finish school with the Merit Certification at grade 8 and then start the search for work.  We began with Kindergarten which meant turning up to Mrs. Della's house each morning who lived close by.  We had a few games and learnt the alphabet but the highlight of this year was watching Mrs. Della's son performing an incredible stunt on the fixed swing in the back yard.  We all retreated to a safe distance as he stood up on the seat and started a backwards and forwards pendulum motion which soon gathered enough momentum to propel him in a full circle over the top of the swing.  It still takes my breath away today when I think of it, especially as he usually finished his routine by doing it backwards.

Each of us boys attended the local Primary school; Our Lady’s Ringwood, which was run by the Brigidine sisters.  Being born in December, I was put on the backburner for a year because of the the huge class sizes and didn't start school until I was seven.  I got my first hiding in grade one when I decided to pinch coloured pencils from kids school bags during recess.  When we came to school the next day, the teacher asked if anyone was missing pencils.  Most of the kids put up their hands and I got a wack for each pencil I took. This taught me early, it was not a good idea to steal.  We used small slates and wrote our lessons in chalk. By Grade two we had over 80 in the class which is extraordinary by today’s class sizes of about twenty five.   We had many kids with European names such as Domenic Pezzamenti, Yanis Machunstki and George Gamooda.  Dad used to often amuse himself by asking as to run through some of the names of our class members.  Sr. Beatrice’s religion lessons centred around the 1d catechism and a large ‘A framed’ structure at the front of the room which contained a series of calendar sized pictures which was used to explain stories from the Bible.  I got into more trouble when I was getting quite annoyed by a girl who sat close to me so I locked her school case up and threw the key away.  By this stage we had graduated to using nib pens.  Ink wells were placed in all the desks and spilt ink was common as well as blue tongues.  The best part about grade 2 was recess and lunch times.  In summer we played these monster marble games which involved rolling marbles down a long slope.  The object of the game was to touch another marble and then the winner collected the lot.  In winter we mucked around out the back of the school by making clay mud sculptures.   The yellow, orange clay was great to work with, almost like plasticine and careful rubbing produced a really smooth finish.

Mum was dissatisfied with the huge numbers at Our Lady’s so I was enrolled into St. Leo’s College Box Hill in grade 3.  I was only nine but I caught the train by myself each day and walked the four or five kilometres each way from the train station.  We walked through the cemetery short cut for the next nine years and I’m sure this experience influenced my religious viewpoint and gave me an appreciation for life.  We started each day with an outside assembly and the Principal, Br. Best would invite any students to come forward if they thought they had shinier shoes that he did and the reward was a night without homework.   It was always an unfair competition because we came through puddles and mud to school while Br. Best wore galoshures which were rubber coverings to ensure there was not a speck on his shoes.  This competition created a lot of good humour to begin the school day.  In winter, Br. Roberton, would often get us to run to the handball court and back to warm us up.  Douglas Perry with the slick brush back hairstyle always won this race.  One of the highlights of this year was our production of the play ‘The Mikato’.

Often before we rose in the morning we heard the clink clink clink of the 'milky' delivering bottles to everyone's doorstep.  The silver tops were used for all sorts of things including decorations and making loud explosions. This was achieved by placing the milk top between the index finger and thumb of one hand and clapping quickly with the other hand.  We also heard the clip, clop, clip clop in the early morning of the rubbish man with his draught horse and dray.  He was a really only guy, and we often hung on the back for a free ride.  This was helped because there was a potatoe bag attached underneath which we placed our feet into as we hung from the end of the tailboard.  In those days fresh fruit and vegetables were delivered to your doorstep and also such things as ice and fish on Fridays.

We had a popular but strict teacher in grade 5 named Brother Negus.  He was the one who introduced me to the recorder and the world of music.  We were using the new invention, ball point pens by that stage and he was able to show us a new style of writing using italic letters.  Br. Negus was considered a master teacher and we would often go to the 'demonstration room' which was equipped with microphones and a two way mirrored glass at the back of the room.  In this way trainee teachers could observe as well as  give lessons themselves.  We were the guinea pigs but we liked the change and sometimes we heard muffled laughter behind the mirrors when our trainee teacher made mistakes.  Our day consisted of copying notes and diagrams from the blackboard from subjects such as Arithmetic, spelling, comprehension, grammar, essay writing and reading from a small school paper which was distributed to all students on a regular basis.  I remember one trainee teacher in particular, Br. Fulbrook who taught a poetry lesson on the Abbot of Aberbrothok.  He tied a bell on the Inchcape rock to warn passing ships of the danger until a nasty guy called ‘Ralph the Rover’ cut it off and became a victim himself in a storm.  (The poem was written by Robert Southey: 1774-1843.  The Inchcape Rock is a dangerous reef in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland not far from Abroath.)  We were all asked to read a stanza and I can still remember mine.

‘Ralph the Rover tore his hair,

He cursed himself in his despair.

The waves rush in on every side,

The ship is sinking beneath the tide.’

Brother Fulbrook was from Malta and I thought he was special because he gave me Maltese stamps for my burgeoning collection.  One of the highlights of our school day was the oral reading by Br. Negus of the Bobsey Twins collection of books before we left to go home.  These readings inspired me so much to buy ‘The Bobsey Twins on the Pony Trail’.  I would have preferred the  ‘The Bobsey Twins at mystery mansion’ but it was so popular you could never buy a copy.  Mum had the right idea and was always trying to get us to read such books as ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Black beauty’ but we usually preferred to play sport.  At various times all the classes lined up for needles.  This was quite intimidating because they were sterilized by a small gas blue flame.  Thalidomide was raring its ugly head around this time and one kid in our class had gross deformities to his hands.

By grade six, I really couldn’t understand why English seemed to be spoilt by such things as adjectival and adverbial phrases and clauses.  We had no access to a school library and so we had to rely on borrowing from the Box Hill Municipal library.  By this stage we were starting to develop into 'smartalecs'.  I remember one day our teacher, Br. Duane, asking us to put the word ‘arrest’ into a sentence.  I put up my hand.  “Yes, Brian”.  I impishly replied, “I had a rest on the couch” which drew raucous laughs from the rest of the class and the expected rebuke from my teacher.  But all this creativity came to an end when we began our secondary schooling with Br. Crowel.  He was an elderly, balding man with wisps of white curly hair above his ears.  He was an extremely strict teacher and our only lighter moments were the few times that he referred to his beloved football team – North Melbourne.  We were introduced to the boring world of Latin and French and these subjects became a drudgery for us until we could drop them three years later.  It was only in adult life that I could see that much of our English language is made up from Latin derivatives.

Br. Best, our first headmaster, became our Form 2 teacher but he was too soft for the likes of us.  He was a kind bloke, a gifted artist and handball champion but he died too early due to leukaemia.  Our classes in secondary school were usually about 55 to 60 students and this was lot to manage as you could imagine. Br. Best used to sign all the students work who were not to stay in at lunchtime.  I obtained the same style pen and ink as Brother Best and became such a proficient forger that many of the students relied on me to relieve them of their detentions.  I remember signing one kid's work and telling him that it was poor effort and wouldn’t pass scrutiny.   He insisted on presenting the signature and it got him into a heap of trouble.  Fortunately, I was not 'dobbed' in and I became more careful with the number of kids I helped out.   Our English teacher in this year was Br. Cole.  In one particular lesson he presented the poem 'The Bush Christening' by Banjo Patterson (1864-1941) and I remember him telling us to learn it off by heart for homework.  I really burnt the midnight oil and had it off pat but I was so disappointed the next day when he said he was only joking.  Even today I can still recite the 12 stanzas.

By Form 3, we were pulled back into line with the well seasoned and strict teacher who we had previously had in grade 5 – Br. Negus.  He taught us a variety of subjects including Geography and I remember studying Africa in particular and its exports.  There was quite an unruly element that had developed in my class by Form 4 and they were referred to as ‘hoods’ such as Dallow, Maguire and Leo Pretty who later started the devastating Cockatoo bushfires.  They had long hair because of the ‘Beatle’ phenomenon and were always looking for pranks to play.  By this stage we had our first lay teachers, Mr. Sloane and Mr. Ham.  They were no where near as strict as the Christian Brothers and we took out our pent up energy on them which made their classes unruly at times.  On one occasion some students lit a series of smoke bombs and hid them in the storage areas below their desks.  They covered the ink well outlets and after about ten minutes uncovered the holes.  This produced clouds of billowing smoke and everyone started to yell out “fire –fire.”  Some students even climbed out of the window of the two storey building and stood on the ledge adjacent to the building.

Sport was a big deal in Christian Brother’s schools and it was quite an honour to be picked in the first team for cricket and football.  We played coloured competition footy on Friday on the monastery oval and I was noticed one day for my jumping ability.  I was picked to play seconds footy for the school on Saturday and soon I found myself rucking for the First’s College team.  This of course gave me enormous self esteem and we couldn’t wait to read the write-ups of the game on the school noticeboard each Monday morning with a summary of the game and the list of best players.  We capped off a great year by defeating Aquinas College in the Grand Final in 1965.  One of the members of this team was Geoff Curtis who was later lost in the Sydney Hobart Yacht race.

These years were marked by a series of external examinations which placed enormous stress on the students.  They began with Proficiency (Form 3), to Intermediate (Form 4), Leaving (Form 5) and finally Matriculation (Form 6).  Your promotion to the next year level depended entirely on a three hour examination at the end of each year.  The results of the last two years came out in the daily newspaper and ‘nerved wracked’ students hung anxiously around their letter boxes for good news.  The only thing that got me through these times was a series of plastic wad packets bought from newsagencies which contained summaries of the subjects on cards.  The product was called “Key Facts”.  They saved my bacon in such boring subjects as ‘Modern European History’.  The highlight of the Leaving year for me was winning first prize of a two week trip for two to Brisbane in a 2 bob raffle.  Mum and I went on the long bus ride and Br. Mogg O.B.E. was kind enough to wave us goodbye at the Melbourne terminal.  It was a wonderful trip for us and the first time I was able to experience the balmy atmosphere of the tropics.  For Mum it was also a chance to remember her honeymoon twenty years earlier and her visit to such places as Lone Pine to hold a koala.

The approach to religious education was beginning to have a major overhaul by the middle 1960's due to the Second Ecumenical Council convened by Pope John XXXIII.  Religion based too much on fear and rules was being tempered by a return to a fuller understanding of the Bible with a more pastoral, caring attitude.  The churches became radically different places with altars turned around, statues removed and the Latin Mass was replaced with English.

So how has education changed?  Now the students have a variety of sources in which to research information for themselves such as school libraries, computers and in science laboratories.  The sporting curriculum is much more diverse and students have a much wider range of choices in the curriculum such as art and technical subjects.  Education has changed from rote learning and memorisation to developing research and communication skills.