Paradigm, No. 16 (May, 1995)

By the mid-1920s The School Paper had been the prescribed reading material for 30 years in the State elementary/primary schools of the state of Victoria, Australia. Senior Departmental officials had apparently felt for some time that more space could be given in that journal to ‘articles of current interest’ and, as a consequence, in 1925 they decided ‘to issue a set of reading books for the grades in order to provide additional graded reading matter’. A number of committees of teachers, inspectors and artists undertook this work with Charles Long, recently retired, returning as general editor.¹ Long acted in this capacity from January 1927 to June 1928. The aim was to produce these readers by 1928. The readers for the First and Eighth Grades appeared in 1928, those for the Third and Sixth in 1929 and those remaining in 1930. James McRae, Tate’s successor as Director of Education, expressed the hope that ‘the issue of the new School Readers [would] make possible an extensive widening of the range of reading material’. He felt that ‘much harm had been done in the past by compelling pupils to read and re-read matter ad nauseam’. Ironically this had been one of the reasons given for introducing The School Paper and now was seen as one reason to replace it. McRae believed that there was a need for a ‘sounder treatment of literature’, which was, he thought, ‘the most important subject of instruction in any school, both from the point of view of its immediate value and of its influence in later life’.² The last four words refer to the strongly-held view, referred to briefly in the first part of this paper, that the reading of good literature would teach morality.

The eight new Readers were ‘to replace the present School Paper as the regular reading book of each class, while The School Paper, somewhat modified in content, [would] replace the supplementary readers formerly in use’.³ However, certainly for the brighter pupils, this latter material remained available and judging by the print runs of the local publisher, Whitcombe and Tombs, various series must have been much used. McLaren’s bibliography (1984) shows 74 titles available over these years for the ages 8-9, 57 for 9-10, 75 for 10-12 and 65 for 12-14. These were in the main by British authors, though there was some Australian material included: thus seven of the 75 books for the 12-14 age range and 9 of the 65 for 12-14 year olds were by Australians.

Initially the Readers were only sold in State schools, but once their requirements were met they were made available to private schools at the same prices as in the government schools, that is, from 4d. for the First to 1s. 3d. for the Eighth Reader.⁴ The Department gained much revenue from these sales, though the profit earned is not known. The annual reports of the Minister show that in the 1930s this revenue was £6/7000, in the 1940s £8/9000, in the 1950s from £14,000 to £35,000 and reached £54,207 in 1964, though by the 1950s certain other sales were included in this figure.

The initial response to the Readers was on the whole good. A. G. Stephens, a well-known critic, thought the Department was ‘to be thanked for the effort and accomplishment of these books’.⁵ There were some early criticisms of difficulty, particularly concerning the Eighth Reader. A study undertaken from Melbourne Teachers’ College found that ‘some revision would greatly improve it’. The main objections, despite a general opinion in its favour in comparison with The School Paper, were directed comprehensively against ‘much of the verse and some of the prose selections’.⁶ Some examples were given. When the second edition was published in 1940 in many cases the items criticized were replaced by material often similar in aim, but more easily understood by the readers.

In the ‘Preface’ to the Eighth Reader, the first published, a rationale for the series was presented, part of which clearly related to the formation of national identity:

The young readers were to begin at home, to be taken in imagination to various parts of the Empire, and to the United States of America, and thus to gain a knowledge of their rich heritage and acquire a well-founded pride of race. The inculcation of a sound morality was always to be kept in view, and support given to the creation of a feeling against international strife and to the implanting of a desire for world-wide toleration.⁷

Symbolic of this approach was the series of full-page photographs and reproductions in all except the earliest volumes. All the reproductions were of well-known paintings of bush scenes by Australian artists from the collection of what was then the Melbourne National Gallery. The photographs were of explorers in the Third and Fourth Readers, of the statue of ‘Patriotism’ at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, in the Fifth Reader and then, successively, of the State Parliament House, Melbourne, the Commonwealth Houses of Parliament, Canberra, and Australia House in the Strand, London. In addition, notes were to be provided at the end of the books, both to be ‘helpful in themselves’ and to suggest further ‘interesting lines of study’, though this policy was not applied to the readers for the two youngest grades. The First Reader, the only one illustrated in colour, did, however, have a full alphabetically arranged spelling list. The nature of the notes can be seen by citing that to the poem, ‘Tubal Cain’, in the Fifth Reader:

Tubal Cain was a forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron (see Genesis iv., 22). What is meant by ‘the crown of his desire,’ ‘spoils of the forest’? What evil had Tubal Cain done? We’ll not forget the sword -- Is it necessary? Discuss the question, What efforts are being made at present to do away with the sword?⁸

In the Second Edition (1940), published at the start of the Second World War, the last question was put in a slightly stronger way, ‘Does the world need another Tubal Cain?’

The first two Readers were the shortest, at 96 and 112 pages respectively. They were in large type, illustrated by simple, sometimes coloured, line drawings; the material, whether prose or verse, was short in length and used very simple language. Though there is occasional mention of Australian items -- gum trees, magpies a laughing jackass, parrots and wattle -- in the First Reader the presentation is not aggressively Australian; the Second Reader, except in the well-remembered story of ‘the Hobyahs’ about a dog, exhibits this characteristic even less strongly. The Third Reader is a more advanced version of the same approach, though longer, with 152 pages, black-and-white illustrations and notes. The material still consists of fairy tales, make-believe animal stories and simple poems by, for example, R. L. Stevenson and Christina Rossetti. Of the 22 poems and 16 prose items by known authors, six and three respectively were by Australians.

The remaining Readers were for students considered to be more advanced in taste. Increasingly with each grade the appropriate Reader contained more photographs, as opposed to line drawings, more factual material, and a more complex style. The notes at the end of each book were fuller, and more cues were given for further study or to raise interest. Successive Readers were, too, of greater length. All from the First to the Eighth Readers were soft-bound.

The Fourth Reader contained 183 pages including the notes and the spelling list (also a feature of the Second and Third Readers). This text was, however, markedly more Australian in its character. Ten of the 28 poems were by Australians, as were 12 of the 28 prose items; two of the latter were Aboriginal legends. As a frontispiece was a painting by Walter Withers, showing a mob of sheep being driven through the bush; there was also a full-page photograph of the statue in Melbourne of the explorers Burke and Wills. There were several items about nature study including material about magpies, platypuses and lyrebirds. Historical material was included for the first time, for example, accounts of Columbus, General Gordon and, from the recent war, of Simpson and his donkey, a story of heroism at Gallipoli, supposedly known to all Australians.

In the Fifth Reader there were 216 pages, 23 of which were ‘Notes and Comments’. An evident new policy was that of putting material in ‘blocks’. Thus, of 193 pages of readings, the first 83 were Australian, apart from half a page of Shakespeare, six and a half pages from Mark Twain and five pages from London Punch. There followed 26 pages about foreign countries, mainly about Britain, but also about India and Japan. The last 63 pages were of mixed Australian and British origin, though the main focus was Australian and upon animals and the countryside. The frontispiece was Longstaff’s well-known painting of a Gippsland bushfire.

The Sixth Reader, containing 244 pages, continued to emphasize Australian material. Thirteen of 23 poems and 36 of 63 prose items were Australian; the frontispiece was a copy of Tom Roberts’ ‘Shearing the Rams’ and there was a full-page photograph of the Parliament House, Melbourne. The Seventh Reader was of almost identical length, had as a frontispiece Longstaff’s ‘Breaking the News’, and contained a photograph of the then-new Houses of Parliament in Canberra. There were some short blocks of material, including 15 pages on war and peace, 15 pages on the sea, with special reference being made to Elizabethan times, and 11 pages on walking alone. The Eighth Reader, the last of the series, had 260 pages. The frontispiece was Frederick McCubbin’s triptych, ‘The Pioneers’, and the photograph was of Australia House in London. There were blocks of 48 pages on the Australian bush, including 12 on Aborigines, 21 on pioneers, 8 on democracy, 15 on the Anzacs in peace and war, 41 on nature, four on work, 10 on heroes, and 32 on the British Empire. The final 34 pages contained ‘Notes and Explanations’.

At the beginning of 1940 a revised set of Readers was issued, except that in the case of the Sixth Reader publication did not occur until as late as 1953. These were well received and reportedly seen as more interesting than the old edition. The promise was made that in order to save expense for parents ‘no further revision should be made for at least ten years’.⁹ There was no further revision and the readers slowly went out of use as improved materials became available by the 1960s.¹⁰ The revision mainly affected the verse included in these texts. Tastes had changed and teaching methods now concentrated on immediate appeal, the hope being that a taste for reading more difficult material would ultimately be born. Thus verse using more direct language with fewer literary allusions and within the experience of young readers was chosen. In the revised Sixth Reader, for example, works by Tennyson, Burns and James Hogg were replaced by material deemed more appropriate. In the new Eighth Reader the material on democracy and political matters, found by Browne and Griffiths in 1931 to be unpopular, was replaced; two pieces that were condemnatory of war were included. In all the revised readers re-grouping occurred. For example, as we have seen, the Eighth Reader had ended with a block on the Empire; re-grouping formed a final block of French, German and English literary pieces.

A detailed content analysis of the Victorian Readers found 29.4% of a sample of items to be written by Australians, 27.8% by British, and 7.7% by American authors. 21.3% were set in Australia, 15.1% in Britain, 2.4% in the USA, and 1.9% in the British Commonwealth. References (percentages) to various themes or concepts occurred as follows: nationalism/patriotism 8.1; religiousness/devotion to God 11.5; social rules/laws 8.9; heroes to emulate 5.5; work-ethic 3.1; attitudes to peace 2.1 (1.7 positive) and attitudes to war 8.4 (3.4 negative); wealth 11.7; poverty 8.1.¹¹ In its conclusions this study found that:

the Victorian Readers convey a balanced view of life and a sense of realism. . . [present] a wide cross-section of cultural attitudes and experiences, and a concern with a broad spectrum of social relationships including those that foster the development of the child’s inner world.

There may have been chauvinist poems like ‘For England’ or moralistic verse like ‘What Can a Little Chap Do?’, but these were balanced by the tragedy of ‘King Lear’ and the heroism of ‘The Drover’s Wife.’¹²

Three of the categories isolated by this content analysis will receive comment: war, religion and the Aborigines. So far there have been several passing mentions here of the general area of war and peace. The political pressure in this respect put on Long as editor of The School Paper was referred to in Part I. During the early/mid-1920s Long’s policy became one of including less material on military glory and more of a pacifist nature and this same approach can be seen to have coloured his editorship of the Readers. The last three lines of the ‘Preface’ to the Eighth Reader quoted above show this, as does the inclusion of the various items against war mentioned above and noted in Edwards’ content analysis.

The Readers did not avoid the mention of God. The last line of the last lesson in the First Reader runs, ‘We shall pray to God and thank him for our happy day’ and in four of the ‘rhymes’ included there are mentions of the Deity.¹³ In the Fourth Reader was John Oxenham’s poem, ‘What Can a Little Chap Do?’ which had been printed more than once in The School Paper. After a string of moral messages, such as, ‘fight for truth’ and ‘shun all that’s mean’, the last line reads: ‘He can follow Christ the King’.’ In the Sixth Reader a stanza by Coleridge ends, ‘For the dear God who loveth us/He made and loveth all’.¹⁴ The Seventh Reader includes an extract from Addison, ‘Sir Roger at Church’, a description of an 18th-century Anglican country service.¹⁵ In the Eighth Reader there is an extract from Charlotte Yonge’s A Book of Golden Deeds, ‘The Last Fight in the Colosseum’. In this piece an unknown Christian dies trying to stop gladiators fighting but ‘not in vain . . . The shock of such a death before their eyes turned the heads of the people . . .’ ¹⁶ and these cruel fights ended. Another extract, ‘A Gentleman of Canada’, told how Neil McAlpine, a Scottish wheat-dealer in Canada, though a Presbyterian, helped ‘the Baptists, the Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Methodists in a bad season’,¹⁷ a lesson in religious toleration, but one which could raise awkward questions about the differences between the denominations -- the notes give this topic no attention.

As with The School Paper the Readers were used in schools of all denominations, including the Catholic, though some schools run by religious orders did use their own. Long, the Editor of the Readers, as noted in Part I, was always careful how he used religious material in Departmental publications. The test of his success in the Readers, as elsewhere, was that objections were rare.

Quite clearly a definite policy was successfully followed of avoiding religious controversy, but just as obviously a sustained effort was made in Departmental publications to present material that might teach, or be used to teach, moral lessons. Long’s own books, particularly Noble Deeds of Famous Men and Women (1912), were consciously written in this vein, as their prefaces show. The School Paper throughout its existence and the Readers during their shorter period of use did emphasise what was seen to be accepted morality -- in the early years a form of English public school morality -- in the prose and verse offered to students for their reading. This material included both openly didactic passages, such as those on ‘Gentlemen’ and ‘Good Manners’, and also fine English literature, the reading of which, it was hoped, would teach moral lessons. Though there was some mention of such Australian qualities as ‘mateship’ -- the word ‘mate’ appeared in the First Reader -- the main material in which the Australian stereotype was portrayed was the growing corpus of Australian children’s literature,¹⁸ some of which was included in various of Whitcombe and Tombs’s series. Such items were not given major emphasis in the Readers, but were found more often in The School Paper after 1945, and were often drawn from books recommended in the lists provided annually for Australian Literature Week.

There was material included in three of the Readers about the Aborigines. The Fourth Reader had two of Kate Langloh Parker’s legends, a poem by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, ‘Bett-Bett and the Stars’, marked by some very odd pidgin English, and a short tragic stanza by Mary Gilmore, ‘The Lost Tribes’. There were also three stories in which Aborigines helped or saved whites when lost or in danger. The note to ‘Lost in the Bush’ contained the expected question, ‘Why can blacks track better than white men?’ ¹⁹ In the Seventh Reader was Colin Sayce’s ‘Branding Cattle’, in which Seventh Reader was Colin Sayce’s ‘Branding Cattle’, in which Aborigines are mentioned in passing. There is, also, E. J. Bornfield’s ‘Eagle’s Nest Float’, which tells more fully of the living conditions of the inhabitants of an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and ends by praising those whites ‘who isolate themselves in a drear and unfriendly tract for the sake of a few coloured folk whose mental capacities are feeble and whose habits are shockingly disgusting’. The notes turn the paternalistic screw even tighter by asking readers to write an essay on ‘Helping the Weaker Brethren’.²⁰ The Eighth Reader had a small block on the Aborigines, including Henry Kendall’s poem ‘The Last of His Tribe’ and D. Macdonald’s ‘From a Western Hill-Top’, with a picture of Aboriginal artefacts and these words:

For a time the whites lived in sufferance among the blacks; by and by the position was reversed. When the white men came here, the aborigines wandered over these wide plains in thousands. Where are they today? ²¹

Basically much the same position was taken here as in The School Paper and it matched that of the majority of white Australians. Though there was a vague stirring of the national conscience in their regard Aborigines were seen as a dying race of anthropological specimens who had somehow survived into the modern age. The real attempt to change such views through school materials did not begin until the mid-1960s, that is, after the period dealt with here.

Some comments must also be made about the political assumptions contained in the Readers. The basic belief was, as in The School Paper, that democracy was the best political system and that that meant the British mode of government. This approach is symbolised in a full-page photograph illustrating the article in the Eighth Reader on ‘The British Empire’ (oddly by an American). This picture, entitled ‘At the Heart of Empire’, showed Westminster Abbey with Kipling’s words, ‘Where the Abbey makes us We’, and the Houses of Parliament -- ‘The home of the ‘Mother of Parliaments’.

At the individual level the view of citizenship presented was the one for which Tate, who retired in 1928, had worked so hard, an emphasis on both rights and duties. ²² In the Fifth Reader was a story, ‘I have a right’, about an English village baker, who claims the right to do as he will, though here with ‘good’ results. The notes ask, ‘To what extent are we justified in curbing the rights of other people?’ ²³ There is a passage in the Eighth Reader, entitled ‘True Liberty’, containing these words, ‘[A free man] is not free because he does what he likes, but he is free because he does what he ought and there is no protest in his soul against that doing’.²⁴ The notes have no comment on this rather question-begging statement!

These Readers were successful. They were widely used well into the 1950s until overtaken by more modern kits of materials and they were well-loved. This last point is demonstrated by the fact that when in 1986 the Education Department republished a facsimile set of the first edition of all eight volumes, the print run was quickly sold out. Most Victorians of 45 and over, whether they were at State or private schools, will recall these books with warmth.

There were, of course, some omissions in these Readers. This was particularly with regard to economic matters, though we must remember that the ‘Made in Australia’ section of The School Paper for Grades VII/VIII covered this field. We have also to recall that these sets of materials were supplemented after 1934 when the revised Course of Studies for Primary Schools was introduced. To support this new curriculum the Education Department commissioned two sets of readers from Whitcombe and Tombs. These were the Vivid History Readers, Books III-VIII and the Human Geography Readers, Books III-VIII, both published in the mid-1930s. Both systematized and added to much of the material that had been previously issued in The School Paper. It is relevant here to note that the Catholic Education Office in 1934 published The Catholic History Readers, Books I-VI (revised in 1949) for use with their own newly-approved history syllabus.

As a form of teaching material readers were not so flexible as journals. New editions were rare and expensive, especially where the market only covered one state. A monthly journal could and did react to changes in world events and in styles of pedagogy. Both State exemplars studied here demonstrated very clearly the ideals of the upper-middle class white Australians who ran the Education Department; the Catholic emphasis was somewhat different, reflecting more the local hierarchy’s view of what values should be. These ideals did not change much until after the Fall of Singapore in 1942, and even then only gradually was a less British-oriented view acceptable to Australia’s rulers. However, these materials did not seek to change political or moral values except in two regards and in each case they largely failed. The first was the long battle for temperance in The School Paper; the second was the fight, inspired by Labor, in the 1920s for peace. The latter certainly affected the content of Departmental publications, but Germany and Japan did not permit any resulting change in attitude to go very far. These reading materials reinforced contemporary values; they were not agents for change.

Notes

1. MPI (1926-27), p. 10.
2. MPI (1926-37), p. 23.
3. Educ. Gaz., September, 1928: 219.
4. 19.2.29: 30.
5. Stephens, 1931: 83.
6. Browne and Griffiths, p. 83.
7. R.8: v-vi.
8. R.5: 201.
9. MPI, 1939-40: 4.
10. Blake, 1973: 1057.
11. Edwards, 1981, p. 92, 97.
12. Edwards, 1981, p. 278.
13. R1: 80, 84, 86 and 87.
14. R6: 18.
15. R7: 2-4.
16. R8:127.
17. R8: 200.
18. Niall, 1984.
19. R4: 166.
20. R7: 227.
21. R8: 16.
22. Tate, 1920: 17.
23. R5: 209.
24. R8: 73.

 

References

Blake. L. J. (ed.) Vision and Reality, Vol. 1 (Melbourne: Education Department, 1973).

Browne, G. S. and Griffiths, D. C. ‘The Reader for Grade VIII’, Education Gazette and Teachers Aid (23 April, 1931).

Cope, B. ‘Racism, Popular culture and Australian identity in transition: A case study of change in school textbooks since 1945’. In Markus, A. and Rasmussan, R. (eds.) Prejudice in the Public Arena: Racism (Clayton, Vic.: Centre for Migrant Studies and Intercultural Affairs, Monash University, 1987).

Edwards, K. ‘Basic reading books in the primary school past and present’. M.Ed. thesis, School of Education, La Trobe University, 1981.

McLaren, I. F. Whitcomb’s Story Books. A Trans-Tasman Survey (Parkville Vic.: University of Melbourne Library, 1984).

Minister of Public Instruction (‘MPI’). Annual Reports (Melbourne: Government Printer).

Niall, B. Australia Through the Looking Glass (Carlton Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1984).

Stephens, A. G. ‘Victorian Readers: A Critic’s Comments’, Education Gazette and Teachers Aid, (23 February, 1931).

Tate, F. Continued Education (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1920).

Victorian Readers, Books One to Eight (‘R’), (Melbourne: Government Printer).

 

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