Teaching, the Noblest of Professions, but the Sorriest of Trades ¹

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.

In this context, teachers have had a hard struggle to attain and maintain a satisfactory position. Paradoxically, while teachers remained silent and accepted that low pay, poor conditions and depressed status were their inevitable lot, society happily regarded them as ‘professionals’. When, during the 1960s and 1970s, teachers found a militant voice and won improved conditions, remuneration, training and status, society turned against them. In the perception of the community, teaching became a ‘job’ like any other. But the responsibility is undiminished; certainly, parents are only too ready to hold teachers responsible for their children’s failure to fulfil their ambitions. Still, young people continue to join the ranks of the teaching profession. Their motives are varied: the most commonly expressed are idealism, security and the desire to gain a tertiary education. Some fall by the wayside. Many come into their own as teachers, in ways that are surprising - not least to themselves.

In the lifetime of Princes Hill, many personalities have passed through the school to instruct, frighten, entertain, awe and inspire successive generations of students. But there are experiences that resonate across the years’. Every new teacher has had to adjust to a new environment - new people, new attitudes, new loyalties and relationships. Sometimes it has not worked. Some did not take their responsibilities to heart, or exploited teaching as a soft option; some responded to student challenge and bravado with bullying and violence often by bouncing their victims about the walls of the sick bay. But these are the exceptions. The majority are prized by ex-students for their influence and guidance.

Teachers at Princes Hill have been tested beyond endurance by many factors: poor funding, adverse physical conditions, overcrowding, dispersed education, a rapidly changing student population, the 1970 fire, student abuse and violence, all have taken their toll. Yet, against all the odds, they have gained the respect of students, parents and the wider community. This section will examine the work of teachers.