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Robertson then invited Dr Charles Pearson, Minister of Public Instruction and architect of Victoria’s state school system, to open the school. Pearson began by expressing his satisfaction that 230 students had enrolled in the school that very morning. There had been ‘a good deal of demur’ when the matter of building a school at Princes Hill was first raised, but the Department would be happy to extend the school if students attended in sufficient numbers. Pearson lectured the assembled students on the necessity of attending school, then went on to praise the school’s large playground. If the training of the mind went on in the classroom, he opined, the training of the character occurred in the playground. He expressed the hope that the students would carry into the playground ‘the same feeling of discipline and duty, and the same sense of loyalty to one another, and the same morals, as they exhibited in the classroom’.
Dr Charles Pearson
John Gardiner MLA gave a brief reply. He expressed his gratitude at the large turnout, which had given the lie to those who claimed that a school at Princes Hill would be a ‘white elephant’. He thanked all those who had supported him in his campaign to have the school established.
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