Melbourne Graduate School of Education - Theses
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ItemThe class teaching of music in state-supported schools in Victoria, 1853-1905( 1956)While studying recent developments in the class teaching of music in schools both overseas and in Australia, I became interested in the way in which music had been introduced into the early schools of Victoria, and began to ask these questions. Who were the first teachers of music in Victoria? What methods did they use? From whom did they learn their methods and what was the content of their lessons? After some background reading and thought I decided to begin this investigation, limiting it for the present, to the content and method of teaching music in the state-controlled schools in Victoria from 1853 - 1905. In the pages which follow, I hope to show how a tradition of music teaching was established in Victorian schools, tracing through England, influences from Germany and France. So that the methods of teaching used and the content of the lessons may be revealed, a survey will be made of the life and work of those concerned with the introduction of music into the elementary schools of England and Victoria. The training; of teachers of class music in Victoria will be discussed and, in so far as it is relevent to the period being investigated, music in secondary education will be included. As far as I can discover, no other research has been carried out in this subject in Australia. I hope that what I have written will not only arouse interest, but assist in increasing among leaders in education an appreciation of the value of music in schools. I should like to thank the following people, all of whom have shown great interest and have given me help and encouragement: Mr. E.L.French and Dr. T.II.Coates, School of Education, The University of Melbourne; Mr. !1.C.Brideson, Research Service of The Public Library of South Australia; officers of The Mitchell and Public Libraries, Sydney, The Public Library of Victoria, The Library of The Australian Council of Educational Research, Melbourne, and the Library of The Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Melbourne; Mr. Geoff. H.Allan, Managing Director of Allan & Co., Melbourne, for the access to the diary of Mr. George Leavis Allan; Mr. bar' of Allan & Co., for his assistance in locating copies of early music published by Allan & Co.; Mr. J.Alex. Allan, Clifton Hill, Melbourne, author of "The Old Model School", who lent me relevent original documents; Mrs. A.L.Eastaugh, South Lyndurst, Seaford, for information about her relative Mr. August Siede; Miss Gladys Rhys Davies, Beach Street, East Malvern, author of "Music Makers of the Sunny South", for a copy of her book and access to the original notes from which it was written; and Mr. A.E.H.Nickson of the University Conservatorium, Melbourne, who gave me valuable advice.
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ItemThe teaching of French in New South Wales and Victoria 1850-1958( 1958)This thesis is a study of the development of the subject French at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne and in the schools of New South Wales and Victoria. It seeks to show why French was taught in this land so far from France, by what methods it was taught, to whom and by whom it was taught. It was impossible to discover the answers to these questions without studying the growth of the two Universities and in particular the changes of curriculum in their Faculties of Arts, the relationship between the Universities and the schools and the influence of the University Departments of French on French in the schools, the growth of secondary education and the public examination system, and the reforms in the curriculum of the secondary schools in the twentieth century as a result of changes in educational theory and philosophy. Only against this background is it possible to understand the rise and fall of one particular subject.
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ItemLive and learn: a plan for an educated citizenry( 1946)The creators and improvers of Attic prose, the chief literary and most elegant language of ancient Greece, were the Sophists, who flourished in the latter half of the 5th century B.C. They were really a class of teachers or popular lecturers which met the demand for education among the people in those days. It is extremely doubtful if they had any common philosophical doctrine. Grote has disproved the traditional view of the Sophists that their intellectualism was characterised by scepticism and ethical egoism; this charge is still made against adult educators: Whatever criticism might be made of the Sophists - Socrates and Plato opposed them - they made a definite contribution to culture. Adult education had its genesis with them. They introduced the people to a wide range of general knowledge, they led their listeners into discussions, they investigated history, poetry, mathematics and science. The fact that they received fees for their courses and made a livelihood out of their teaching did not commend itself to the Greece of that time. It is strange how history repeats itself; even today there is a reluctance on the part of some individuals to pay teachers in order that they might make a livelihood: From the time of the Sophists, philosophers of all hues have agreed on the point that education is a lifelong process. It is no matter for congratulation that today we are far from applying that fact. When the franchise was extended greatly during the last century and politicians decided that, in their own interests, their masters should be educated, the education provided was confined to childhood. Some years ago H. G. Wells surprised a complacent world by declaring that we must choose between education and catastrophe. We know now which prevailed. But because we have suffered a world catastrophe, the primary and secondary schools are not to be castigated. The children could have done nothing to avert this conflict; the older generation, the adults, with parochial prejudices, should have served this world better. It should be the supreme aim of a democratic state to have an informed and intelligent citizenry; democracy is sustained by education. (From Introduction)
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ItemSecondary education in the Australian social order, 1788-1898: a study in the evolution of the theory and the curriculum of secondary education, and the methods of teaching, in the changing Australian social order( 1958)In spite of all the hard words said about educational histories there should be no need to justify the historical study of education. The school, like the Church or the Theatre, is a social institution: if we may write the history of one, we may write the history of the others. As to the peculiar value of the enterprise, there will be differences of opinion; the distinctive values of the study of history are again in question. Suffice to say that it is the writer's suspicion that the debate on the content and method of secondary education, which has been conducted with considerable vigour in Australia in the past twenty years or so, would have been more fruitful if, to the various capacities brought to it, there had been added the capacity to see the problems of secondary education in the perspective of their development. It is surely not unimportant that the architects of educational policy should he enabled to see their problem in depth.