Then and Now - Education Week 2022

https://player.vimeo.com/video/706390523

[Male voice - Grandad] Oh, mind your fingers there.

[Female voice – Granddaughter] So, Grandad, what are you making?

[Male voice - Grandad] It’s a new coffee table for your grandma.

[Female voice – Granddaughter] Is that you, Grandad?

[Male voice - Grandad] Oh, yes. That’s me at Brunswick Technical School. Learning the skills that I still use today.

[Female voice – Granddaughter] Was school different back then?

[Male voice - Grandad] Oh, well, we had the latest technology. I thought we were very advanced, you know. But when my grandfather went to school, my word, there were big differences then.

From 1872 education was run by the state and all children, including my grandfather, had to attend.

Hundreds of new schools were suddenly needed. Inside the rooms were dark and cavernous, with 60 or more students in tiered seating, often four per desk. Sometimes two classes were taught simultaneously, with the teacher only having a blackboard and a few pictures as resources.

Teaching the young ones in the same way as older students didn’t work. So Dr. Pearson, Minister of Public Instruction in the 1880s, introduced a new German method called kindergarten.

Our first Director of Education, Frank Tate, extended this in the early 1900s with independent infant schools. Inside, classrooms encircled an inner-hall. He also renovated, including replacing architect Henry Bastow’s ornate gothic windows to allow for more light and ventilation.

Tate opened our first secondary school. Now Melbourne High School and later junior technical schools. We finally had primary education, followed by two secondary school options.

Subjects in domestic arts included housewifery and cookery and they were popular with the girls. Our first cookery school opened in Bastow’s Carlton State School in 1899. With more following under the leadership of cookery supervisor Flora Pell. Your grandmother still has one of her recipe books. And trades were for the boys. That’s how I got interested in carpentry.

Oh, what do we have here?

[Female voice – Granddaughter] That’s my school grandad. Now we have the past and the present.

[Male voice - Grandad] And the future?

[Female voice – Granddaughter] I wonder what schools

will look like then.

[Male voice - Grandad] Indeed. I wonder.

[End of transcript]

Updated 20 May 2022

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Then and Now - Education Week 2022

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