Education Week
57 years ago, 110 boys, all in grey suits, short pants, ties and caps, started in year 7 (form 1) at the Box Hill Boys High School, Victoria. I was one of them. The school had 850 boys in 1951 and recently I joined with over 300 of them at a dinner in the Box Hill Town Hall.
Among the noisy ex-students, the most frequent word uttered was “I” followed by “remember”. A few former teachers of that era were also present. In our classes they all used to wear university gowns. One of my teachers of English, now 97 years of age, watches my television program each week and writes to me: “Moyes, you said “You and I”. It should have been in the objective case. Obviously it was in the accusative hence you should have said “You and me”. You always had that weakness.” I reply “Yes Mr. Halliday”, the only 68 year-old student in Australia still responding to his English teacher.
World War II ended in 1951. Jack Guthrie, my Latin Master was addressed as “Wing Commander Guthrie”, and he wore his Air Force uniform and service ribbons every Thursday, when he took charge of 150 uniformed boys in Air Training Corp. It must have been hard for a man who was such a high-ranking officer as Wing Commander to settle back into “civy” life where his charges were very young teenagers.
My first Headmaster, Mr. Moody, had a gasping voice from being gassed in the trenches in France in 1916. He had landed at Gallipoli in 1915. Our Anzac Day and Remembrance Day parades were very serious affairs. Sport was real. My second Headmaster was W M (Bill) Woodful, the former Australian Test Cricket Captain, “bodyline” hero, and the man who had Don Bradman in his team. He had great pulling power and at our speech nights in remember the Governor General. The Prime Minister, the Governor, and famous people like the explorer Sir Douglas Mawson as special guest.
At the dinner was our old sports master who represented Victoria in two sports and among our students were two medallists at 1956 Olympics. Every old boy on the tables was a University graduate. The general consensus was that our teachers were outstanding for their competence, dedication and strict but fair on their discipline. We sang the old school song with gusto and all agreed in our appreciation of a good public school education.
On this education week, we salute the public school teachers and principals among our readers. I commit myself to making the Government find an urgent injection of $180 million needed to fix the shoddy state of public schools recommended by Professor Tony Vinson and subsequent findings. We rejoice in the growing professionalism and commitment of our teachers and we pray for the difficult task teachers have in an increasingly difficult environment of violence, cultural differences, and disinterest by many students in our secondary schools particularly.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.
