{"id":3990,"date":"2013-04-23T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T21:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=3990"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:25:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:25:01","slug":"our-schools-and-the-war-the-victorian-education-dept-wwi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2013\/04\/23\/our-schools-and-the-war-the-victorian-education-dept-wwi\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Schools and the War: the Victorian Education Dept and WWI"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Book<\/a>
‘Our Schools and the War’ by Rosalie Triolo (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2012).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

War is not just about tactics on the battlefield or the machinations of political leaders.\u00a0 It is also about community, both at the site of active fighting and in the home towns and cities that have seen their men disappear to fight.<\/p>\n

In ‘<\/em><\/a>Our Schools and the War’<\/em><\/a> Rosalie Triolo explores Australia\u2019s participation in World War I in terms of community.\u00a0 She focuses on the students, parents, teachers and officials who comprised the Education Department of Victoria.\u00a0 Triolo examines the battle field as well as the home front in her quest to understand how this education community responded and contributed to what was referred to as ‘The Great War’.<\/p>\n

The consideration of the role played by Victorian school children in the war is one of the strengths of this book.\u00a0 Throughout the war the Education Department exhorted school communities to raise funds for the war effort.\u00a0 Triolo shares a long list of activities undertaken by students.\u00a0 In Leongatha students raised canaries for sale, made photo frames, caught mice and sold fish they caught.\u00a0 Students at other schools sold vegetables they grew, helped to feed farm animals, gave musical performances, caught rabbits and sold their skins and made fly nets.\u00a0 Innovation in fundraising was encouraged as long as it did not have the taint of gambling.<\/p>\n

Children were made to feel as real contributors to the work of the communities in which they lived.\u00a0 Their contributions to the war effort gave them many opportunities to apply what they learned at school. We may have a stereotype view of education in this era, that it was about the three R\u2019s rote learning and corporal punishment, but Triolo observes,<\/p>\n

…children were given unprecedented responsibility and autonomy in their communities.\u00a0 They were freed to exercise initiative, step out of desks and classrooms and engage in activities for the wider community as never before.<\/p>\n

p. 79<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Good communication is at the heart of any vibrant community.\u00a0 Over many years the Education Department of Victoria had developed extensive and well-functioning systems of communication at the core of which were two Department publications, The Education Gazette and Teacher\u2019s Aid, <\/i>and the School Paper<\/i>.\u00a0 All Victorian schools were required to use the School Paper<\/i> as the principal source of reading material in the classroom and it was compulsory for all teachers to read The Education Gazette. <\/i>It was through these publications that the Director of Education, Frank Tate, and the editor of the publications, Charles Long, introduced various initiatives in aid of the war effort, urged the Victorian state education community to work harder to support these projects and reported on successes.<\/p>\n

These publications as well as the newsletters produced by the Teachers\u2019 College and high schools, found their way onto the battle-field.\u00a0 Teacher-soldiers enjoyed reading them. They also wrote about their war experiences and sent them to the editors of Victorian Education Department publications who printed them.<\/p>\n

Yet communication within the Victorian Education Department community was not restricted to formal publications.\u00a0 School children were encouraged to make \u2018comforts\u2019 such as clothes like socks and gloves for soldiers fighting overseas.\u00a0 Woodwork classes were devoted to making crutches, walking sticks, stools and bedside tables for injured servicemen.\u00a0 Students included letters to the recipients of their work and at least one class was set the task of writing to soldiers on the battle-front as part of their homework.\u00a0 This was not one-way communication, grateful soldiers replied to the students thanking them for their efforts.<\/p>\n

Teacher-soldiers remained teachers at heart while fighting in the war.\u00a0 They were often selected to deliver various courses to other soldiers and appreciated meeting their former Victorian Education Department colleagues while serving overseas.\u00a0 When they could they took the opportunity to visit schools in the places they were stationed behind the battle-front such as Egypt and England.<\/p>\n

There are two essential elements to histories \u2013 thorough research and eloquent writing.\u00a0 The depth of research and care taken to assess the evidence makes this a text that I will refer to in my own work.\u00a0 However, at times the writing style fails to make this the captivating book I was hoping for.\u00a0 Triolo has masses of evidence to grapple with and in places it feels that she is just listing this evidence.\u00a0 Reflecting on my impressions of this book I realise that I expect to become emotionally involved when reading a war history.\u00a0 While I felt something at various stages during the book, particularly in the sections about the experiences of the teachers on the battle-front and the children working to support the war effort, there were many places where I was reading the book as I would read any other text that I use for professional purposes.<\/p>\n

\"Logo<\/a>This book is a useful resource for any researcher examining the history of war in Australia.\u00a0 While it is entirely focussed on the Victorian response this raises questions about how education communities responded in other states.\u00a0 This book will also be interesting for local and family historians in Victoria seeking to understand the context of what was happening in families and local communities during the War. Triolo\u2019s work has revealed extensive, systematic work towards the war effort by the boys and girls, and the women and men of the Victorian Education Department.<\/p>\n

This review is part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers Challenge<\/a> 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the lead up to Anzac Day, the Australian and New Zealand commemoration of war, I am reading war histories. Rosalie Triolo’s has taken an interesting approach to her history of World War I. In ‘Our Schools and the War’ she looks at the War in terms of community. He book explores the role played by the boys and girls, women and men of the Victorian Education Department in Australia. This history looks at teacher-soldiers on the battle-fields as well as the fundraising and ‘comforts’ making of the students, teachers and parents at home. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5,10,29],"tags":[37,43,106,191,199],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Yvonne Perkins","author_link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/author\/yvonne\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7137,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3990\/revisions\/7137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}