Being special: memories of the Australian public high school, 1920s‐1950s

Abstract

Purpose -The first state high schools in New South Wales (NSW) were restricted to children with high academic ability. The purpose of this paper is to explore the lived experience of over 70 former students from three such schools, one coeducational, the other two single-sex, with special attention to academic and social curricula. Design/methodology/approach -The study investigates memories of a particular moment in the history of secondary schooling in NSW before the establishment of mass secondary education. The authors utilise theoretical concepts from recent oral history studies regarding memory communities and intersectionality. Findings -In bringing ex-students' memories of both single-sex and coeducational academicallyselective high schooling together, the study reports on the homogeneity of the memories of this type of schooling despite the different sexual structures of the schools. The respondents, it is argued, constitute a "memory community" in that they recalled their selection for high school as marking them out as intellectually superior, "special". Their main differentiating feature arose from their sex and gender socialisation. Females were made more consistently conscious of their responsibilities within their schools' gender regime. Originality/value -The approach in this paper adjusts the focus of traditional oral history research in the history of education to "history from within" (rather than "from below"); to experiences of both academic and socialcurriculum (not "formal/informal"); to a gendered approach incorporating both sexes; and to a comparative approach across academically-selective coeducational and single-sex high schools.

Seeking the voices of Catholic Teaching Sisters: challenges in the research process

“…However, the Sisters' own archives are not exempt from the operation of power and authority within the order (congregation). So whilst selecting which archives to access is critical, alternative modes of inquiry such as interviews which draw on the "archives of memory" (Fitzgerald, 2005;May and Proctor, 2013) are necessary in order to access those experiences which may be missing from archival documents.…”

“…The authors' projects include a contextual history of a girls' school, a narrative history of Sisters teaching in remote areas, explorations of Sisters' social welfare work and a history of one section of a teaching order from Ireland (Garaty, 2008(Garaty, , 2013Hughes, 2003Hughes, , 2010Brock, 2012). Using May and Proctor's (2013) term, the authors' research projects would be classed as "history from within" (p. 55).…”

The “special experiment” in languages

“…Apart from a few instances, the development of the languages curriculum in general has received little attention from historians. There are accounts of developments in the traditional languages such as Latin and Ancient Greek, which were considered as an elite part of the curriculum (Campbell, 1968; Barcan, 1993; May and Proctor, 2013). Others have explained events surrounding the development of single languages such as Japanese and Italian (Zainu’ddin, 1988; Klarberg, 1996).…”

“…In the case of Law, all Australian universities required senior Latin (Seitz, 1935, p. 112). For students, Latin functioned as a symbolic marker for those who “had brains” (May and Proctor, 2013, p. 61).…”

Schools as Contested Sites

“…In some cases, scholars have drawn from social science methodologies, including those related to micro-sociology and social semiotics (Chapman and O'Donoghue 2013; O'Donoghue and Chapman 2011). New approaches in the use of oral history have also been used, including those drawing on insights regarding memory, communities, and intersectionality (May and Proctor 2013;Potts 2001;Trotman 2008;Welsh 2003). There are also works which indicate that there is plenty of scope for research involving the examination of photographs (Vick 2009), using visual analysis methods from design history (Frith and Whitehouse 2009), and using film analysis (May 2006).…”