Teaching is fundamental to any society. It involves a heavy responsibility: what young people learn not only influences their individual opportunities in later life, but also lays the groundwork for the values and knowledge systems of society at large. Yet Australian society has reduced ‘chalkies’ to a low rank, denying teachers the prestige that their responsibilities should command. Teachers’ working conditions, salaries, status and quality of training have remained as low as governments politically dare keep them. This contradiction between responsibility and reward is puzzling. In Victoria, the problem began with the earliest moves towards compulsory education. The Education Act of 1872 inflicted a heavy burden on Victoria’s Department of Public Instruction. Political pressures to provide for the education of the masses in the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic) coincided with a rapid increase in population. There was a rush to build schools and find staff to teach the ever-increasing numbers of students. From the teachers’ point of view, the results were spartan conditions, huge classes, meagre salaries, exploited student-teachers, delayed promotions "and an almost dictatorial Department. The Department’s overriding aim was to get the system running. Complaints, adjustments and refinements could be attended to later. Changes, however, came slowly. True to its utilitarian origins, the state school system was conformist and passive: school architecture was uniform, educational philosophy conservative. There were strict regulations governing teachers’ conduct, and the whole apparatus was supervised by an unwieldy bureaucracy. The perennial shortage of funds forced each school into artificial competition with its neighbour for adequate accommodation, funding and staff.
Teachers at Princes Hill School, 1903.
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