Forty Years of Education

Greg Hamilton one of our members gave us an "educational" and amusing talk in June about bis experiences as a teacher librarian and a Primary School Principal in the Education Department of Victoria.

Spanning 43 years, Greg’s career as a teacher began in 1957 and covered a wide variety of schools on his way up the ladder to Principal, a position he held for many years until his retirement in 2000.

He described some of the changes that occurred over these 40 or so years during which perhaps there were more radical changes in Primary schools than there had ever been before.

Previously called Head Teacher, then Head Master, the word Principal was applied to the most senior member of staff in the 1960’s. Also the title of schools was changed from State School to Primary School during this time.

After completing the Trained Primary Teacher’s Certificate at Melbourne Teacher’s College, Greg continued to do a Trained Teacher Librarian course, before being appointed to a school in the Bendigo district where he was instrumental in setting up a central school library.

Before about 1960, most schools had merely a class library in each schoolroom consisting of a few shelves devoted to class library books. These mostly featured classic stories such as "Treasure Island", Rachmal Compton’s “Just William" books or "Biggies" stories. However this era ushered in the beginning of authors devoting their attention to children’s literature, and literally hundreds of titles became available for school libraries.

Another change in schools was the abandonment of the Inspectorial System of teacher assessment for promotion. This method has been replaced by internal assessment within each school and local selection of Principal and teachers instead of the old Inspectorial system.

Greg felt that there were many faults with the old method, teacher competition for the Inspector’s approval, and as a huge bureaucracy was needed to support the system of promotion list and the ensuing appeals, this was counter productive.

Professionalism was hindered and schools’ autonomy was restricted.

While he talked, Greg handed round "Teaching Aids" certificates, photos, newspaper articles and a sample "Classified Roll" to illustrate the points he was making. All was punctuated by amusing anecdotes about school principals and children’s comments.

Time defeated Greg in the end with much left unsaid. We will welcome him back at a later date to continue the story of Education since 1960.

Source: Greg Hamilton writing in 2003-06 DTHS Newsletter