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Efficiency, Stupidity and Class Conflict in South Australian Schools, 1875–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Pavla Miller
Pavla Miller*
Affiliation:
Department of Education, Melbourne University
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Extract

In recent years, a wealth of theoretical literature, building on the many insights of marxist and feminist theory, has attempted to clarify the precise role of schooling in the reproduction of patriarchy and of capitalist society. Much of this analysis has far reaching consequences for the writing of education history. New questions and hypotheses have been formulated so convincingly regarding contemporary education systems that historians can no longer ignore them when dealing with the more or less recent past. While theory has inspired a substantial rewriting of the history of schooling, the new history has sharpened the theoretical tools of the social scientists.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , Fall 1984 , pp. 393 - 410
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

This paper is based on research for my Ph.D. thesis: “Schooling and capitalism: education and social change in South Australia, 1836–1925” (University of Adelaide, 1980). In writing it, I have received valuable criticism from colleagues engaged in the rewriting of Australian history of education; in particular I. Davey and B. Condon.

1. See for example: Johnson, R., “Notes on the schooling of the English working class, 1780–1850” in Dale, R. (ed):, Schooling and Capitalism (London and Henley, 1976).Google Scholar

2. South Australia. Parliament. Parliamentary Papers. (SAPP), 1868, No. 56, p. 36/626,628.Google Scholar

3. SAPP, 1878, No. 40, p. 22.Google Scholar

4. SAPP, 1875, No. 26, p. 12.Google Scholar

5. SAPP, 1883–4, No. 27a, p. 31/7363.Google Scholar

6. SAPP, 1875, No. 26, p. 12.Google Scholar

7. SAPP, 1868, No. 56, p. 78/1488–9.Google Scholar

8. SAPP, 1887, No. 44 No. 44, p. 18.Google Scholar

9. Williams, R., The Long Revolution, (London, 1965), p. 247.Google Scholar

10. South Australia. Minister of Education. Education Gazette, February 1893, p. 25.Google Scholar

11. SAPP, 1875, No. 26, p. 8.Google Scholar

12. SAPP, 1887, No. 44, p. 18.Google Scholar

13. South Australian Government Gazette, (SAGG), 11.6.1867, p. 651.Google Scholar

14. SAPP, 1911, No. 44, p. 24.Google Scholar

15. SAPP, 1921, No. 44, p. 52.Google Scholar

16. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 83/2097.Google Scholar

17. SAPP, 1912, No. 27, p. 39/3987–8.Google Scholar

18. SAPP, 1899, No. 44, p. 14.Google Scholar

19. SAPP, 1887, No. 44, p. 18.Google Scholar

20. SAPP, 1899, No. 44, p. 14.Google Scholar

21. SAPP, 1908, No. 44, p. 28.Google Scholar

22. SAPP, 1886, No. 44, p. 15.Google Scholar

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24. SAPP, 1875, No. 26, p. 12.Google Scholar

25. SAPP, 1875, No. 26, p. 14.Google Scholar

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29. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 24/454.Google Scholar

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31. SAGG, 11.6.1867, p. 651.Google Scholar

32. SAPP, 1884, No. 44, p. 19. Soon, mothers were exhorted to introduce a similar mechanical regularity into the lives of preschool children: “Regularity in all events of the day should be maintained from birth. The mother should have a timetable and should adhere to it as strictly as possible”. Harper, M., The Parent's Book (Sydney, 1928), p. 68, quoted in Reiger, K., “Women's labour redefined” in Bevege, M. et. al. (eds), Worth Her Salt (Sydney, 1982), p. 81.Google Scholar

33. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 98/2217.Google Scholar

34. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 156/3237.Google Scholar

35. SAPP, 1883–4, No. 44, p. 5.Google Scholar

36. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 82/1845.Google Scholar

37. SAPP, 1884, No. 44, p. 17.Google Scholar

38. SAPP, 1904, No. 44, p. 16.Google Scholar

39. SAPP, 1896, No. 44, p. 14.Google Scholar

40. SAPP, 1899, No. 44, p. 20.Google Scholar

41. SAPP, 1902, No. 44, p. 18.Google Scholar

42. SAPP, 1884, No. 44, p. 15.Google Scholar

43. SAPP, 1879, No. 35, p. 18.Google Scholar

44. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 96/2166.Google Scholar

45. SAPP, 1882, No. 27, p. 115/5463.Google Scholar

46. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 2/22.Google Scholar

47. Ibid., p. 46/956.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., p. 100/2266.Google Scholar

49. Ibid., p. 53/1143.Google Scholar

50. Johnson, R., “‘Really useful knowledge’: radical education and working class culture, 1790–1848” in Clarke, J. et. al. (eds), Working Class Culture, (London, 1979), p. 81.Google Scholar

51. SAEG, August 1905, p. 131.Google Scholar

52. Johnson, R., “Notes on the education of the English working class”, p. 49.Google Scholar

53. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 161/3375.Google Scholar

54. SAPP, 1886, No. 44, p. 22.Google Scholar

55. SAPP, 1880, No. 44, p. 29.Google Scholar

56. SAPP, 1883–4, No. 27a, p. 29/7318–21.Google Scholar

57. SAPP, 1906, No. 44, p. 16.Google Scholar

58. SAPP, 1883–4, No. 27a, p. 29/7321.Google Scholar

59. Cleland, J.L., “Compulsory and secular education in South Australia, 1875–1891” (manuscript, History Department, University of Adelaide, n.d.), p. 72.Google Scholar

60. SAPP, 1880, No. 44, p. 32.Google Scholar

61. SAPP, 1881, No. 122, p. 17/274–5.Google Scholar

62. See Wimshurst, K., “Child labour and school attendance in South Australia, 1890–1915,” Historical Studies, Vol. 19, No. 76, (1981).Google Scholar

63. See for example Bowles, S. and Gintis, H., Schooling in Capitalist America, (London and Henley, 1976).Google Scholar

64. See for example Anderson, G.E., Friedland, R. and Wright, E.O., “Modes of class struggle and the capitalist state” in Kapitalistate, No. 4–5, (1976).Google Scholar

65. The general conclusions of my paper with regard to the class biased definition and selection of ‘successful pupils’ are supported and amplified by several large scale computer assisted studies of school registers. See for example Davey, I., “Patterns of inequality: school attendance and social structure in the nineteenth century Canada and Australia” in Hart, J. (ed), Childhood, Youth and Education in the Late Nineteenth Century, (History of Education Society of Great Britain, 1981).Google Scholar

66. For an argument linking school success and the definition of I.Q., see Kamin, L.J., The Science and Politics of I.Q. (London, 1977).Google Scholar

67. For an elaboration of this argument, see Henderson, P., “Class structure and the concept of intelligence” in Dale, R.:, Schooling and Capitalism.Google Scholar

68. Catton Grasby, W., Our Public Schools, (Adelaide, 1891), p. 12.Google Scholar

70. For an outline of this process, see Braverman, H., Labor and Monopoly Capital, (New York and London, 1974).Google Scholar

71. The South Australian Register, 15.4.1873.Google Scholar

72. Ibid., 26.10.1900.Google Scholar

73. Ibid.Google Scholar