Text: John McGregor
Images: SLSA, John McGregor, ridgewayhistory.org.uk
I began grade 1 In February, 1946. The school’s enrolment was just over 110 students, taught by three teachers. Miss Dangerfield taught grades 1 & 2, and to us who were 5 or 6 she seemed old. How wrong were we! At the end of the year she left to get married.
In those days it was common to change left-handed students to right-handed ones by tying their left hands behind their backs. There were three of us who were left handed and, luckily for us, we were allowed to stay that way.
Every morning we all lined up in class groups to march into school accompanied by the drum and fife band. The only tune that I can remember them playing is now the tune for the Adelaide Crows’ song.
Every Monday morning we saluted the flag, (you can see the flagpole at the far right of the photo above) saying, “ I am an Australian, a member of the British Empire. I salute her flag, the Union Jack. I honour her King, King George VI, and I promise cheerfully to obey her laws.”
However, we thought that last line was “I promise Chifley to obey her laws”, because Ben Chifley was the Prime Minister at the time. Once we got into school and the roll had been called, we all sat on the wooden floor (no luxuries like carpet then) and recited times tables.
For our work we sat two to a small table which had a groove cut into it to support a small black board. I only remember using the blackboard and chalk a few times – we then graduated to paper and pencils. The students came from Piccadilly, Stirling, Crafers, what is now Crafers West and The Eagle on The Hill. Everyone walked to school, and so in winter there were many shoes clustered around the open fire to dry out.
Grade 3 in 1948 was exciting for me – a move into another classroom, and my first experience of a male teacher.
As was the situation for my whole time at primary school, I went home, only across the road, for dinner at 12.30. In those days the evening meal was always ‘tea’, and because dad was doing manual labour that midday meal was a hot one.
Grade 4 in 1949 brought with it something I always remembered. Again, a new teacher, and again a man and he lived in Blackwood with his two sisters who ran a lolly shop. His method of encouraging students to perform was based not on punishment but on reward (ie do well and you can reach into the lolly jar). So soon after the war when materials had been in short supply and lollies had been a luxury, this was indeed an incentive to do well in the spelling or mental tests.
That classroom was home to grades 3 and 4 and the grade 5 girls, and so in 1950 when I became a grade 5 boy I joined the other grade 5 boys in the only other classroom along with all the grade 6 and 7 students.
Having been a teacher myself, I can but marvel at the skills of these dedicated teachers I had – none of them ever had fewer than two grades to teach, and it was even more complicated than that. The only woman on the staff, 2 afternoons a week not only had her grade 1s and 2s to supervise, but also had some of the senior girls doing sewing and others doing cooking.
Similarly, the head teacher was out with half of the senior boys tending the gardens while the rest of the boys, mostly unattended, did woodwork. The thought of leaving boys of that age unattended with saws, chisels and the like doesn’t bear thinking about. It is of interest that Crafers was the last Primary School in the state to offer woodwork.
We had exams every year starting from grade 1 and had to pass the grade 7 exam to be eligible for high school, and also tests in arithmetic and spelling were held every Friday.
I can truly say that those days for me were very happy.
Do you have memories of Crafers Primary School as a student, parent or teacher, or as a local resident or can you identify the students in the class photo? Contact us at mldhsgateways@mtloftyhistoricalsociety.org.au or drop into the History Centre at the Coventry Library, 63 Mount Barker Road, Stirling.
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