LOGANHOLME BETWEEN THE WARS:
THE LIVES OF
FIVE FEMALE TEACHERS
One Teacher School Museum Series: No. 4
\,
.,,,
~.~~:~~
~
..
,.,.
<"
~
..
..
~.... -~"
:i.:-~~ ~~ '=~--~ . ~N~
~l~~.-t~ ,·:
• ~A\\~d.-•
-~~-- t- r
,.,~, ~--
,:,_.
~
~
_,~
..-:.r•---
~
Louise Limerick, Peter Meadmore and Brigid Limerick
ISBN O 86856 933 X 1995
Queensland University of Technology Kelvin Grove Campus
JM / i-:.G Limerick Lo Loganholme
A17956706B
l3RN 45"58848
CONTENTS
Page
Foreword . . . v
Acknowledgements . . . vii
Introduction - The five female teachers . . . 1
Isabella Keys: The problem of isolation . . . 4
Daisy Elizabeth Colledge: A brilliant teacher, but a woman • • • . . . 10
Bridget Collins: Head teacher in a school on the 'downgrade' . . . 21
Lillian Agnes McQuire: A brief interlude . . . 25
Mary Beatrice lfickey: A tragic figure . . . 27
Conclusion . . . 32
Endnotes . . . 33
Bibliography . . . 41
FOREWORD
This monograph, the fourth in the series, examines yet another facet of the life and character of the original Loganholme State School. Here we are introduced to the professional lives of the five women who taught in the school over a period of three decades, 1915-1944.
While Loganholme was home for these teachers for varying periods at this time, ranging from four months to eleven years, the nature of their employment with the State Department of Education meant that their time at Loganholme represented but one stage in their working lives which took them to many small schools, often in isolated parts of the state. Not only were these women teachers unclassified, indicating that they had received no formal training for teaching but this lack of official standing was reflected in their meagre salaries and lowly status within the educational bureaucracy.
By examining the official documentation of their professional lives including correspondence and reports as well as sharing the experiences of some of their pupils it is possible to understand something of what it meant to be a female teacher in Queensland at this time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
State Archives, Queensland
The staff of the Educational History Unit, Department of Education, Brisbane - Greg Logan, Rosemary Mammino and Lex Brasher.
Professor Noelioe Kyle for her support and professional expertise.
Ex-pupils and teachers who generously shared their recollections with us.
Cheryl Andersen and Jenny Mansell who helped to get this study ready for publication.
The monograph is part of the One Teacher School Museum Studies, which is supported by the School of Cultural and Policy Studies and the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology.
Introduction - the five female teachers
From 1915 to 1944, a period which spans the interim between the two world wars, there were five teachers at the one-teacher state school at Loganholme. They were all women. It was a sign of the times that in this small rural school a continuous stream of women taught the children of Loganholme. In this era women numerically dominated in the teaching profession in Queensland, albeit in the lower ranks.
Historians, looking at this phenomenon, refer to it as the feminisation of teaching.
Despite being underpaid, underpromoted, unwanted and overworked, women wanted to teach. For this reason female teachers in Queensland existed in a profession where the best positions in the hierarchy were held by men.
Until recently very few careers have been seen as 'suitable" for women to pursue.
Teaching, which was at least seen as good practice for parenting and marriage, was a vocation pursued by many educated women. Men, on the other hand, often chose to teach as a last resort. Thus it can be seen that in good economic conditions when jobs for males were plentiful, and times when the men had something better to do, such as fight in World War I, women have clamoured to secure available teaching positions and their numbers have risen. In times of economic insecurity, such as the Great Depression, the number of female teachers has dropped as their employment has been actively discouraged.
Feminisation was achieved in Queensland as early as 1884 when the number of female teachers employed in all categories rose from 514 (1883) to 598. In this year female teachers represented 52 % of the total number of teachers employed by the Department of Public Instruction. 1 Thus feminisation was achieved earlier in Queensland than in New South Wales where numbers of male and female teachers remained about equal throughout the late 1800s.2 From 1918 to 1920 the percentage of female teachers, at just over 60%, was the highest it had been since 1860.3
The Department of Public Instruction was forced to rely on female labour during World War I. However, from 1920 to 1928 the Department made a concerted effort to whittle away the numbers of female teachers working for the state education system. Women may have been cheap to employ but they were certainly not wanted in great numbers. The male bureaucracy felt that men made better teachers and, for economic reasons, deserved employment. By 1939 only 43.3 % of teachers, in Queensland were women. This was the lowest percentage of females employed in education in any of the States. John Cleverley writes:
These figures would have been adjudged to favour Queensland for an important measure of the health of any teaching service was considered to be the proportion of men it held.4
After World War II there was a rapid decrease in the number of female teachers
Whilst at the classroom level teaching may have indeed become feminised, the educational hierarchy was dominated by men. These men determined the syllabus, inspected the female teachers and arranged for promotions. The education of thousands of Queensland children may have been in the hands of women but the decisions which determined what these women taught, how they taught, and who they taught were made by men. This caused a dilemma. Nevertheless, in an isolated one teacher school, a woman had some freedom to do things her way, that is, until the inspector came round and her teaching was evaluated through a male paradigm.
Female teachers faced two main problems within their profession - low wages and low status.
All of the women who taught at Loganholme belonged to the category of unclassified teacher. That is they were untrained, gleaning any teaching techniques and strategies from their fellow teachers and head teachers while on the staff of larger schools, or in a one teacher school relying on the advice of the school inspector whose report followed the annual inspection. Although a training course was introduced to the teachers college in 1921, it was not until 1928 that the number of female teachers-in- training at teachers college outnumbered those training as pupil teachers. 6 As unclassified female teachers these women were at the bottom of the pecking order in terms of remuneration and professional standing. For instance, during this period, the maximum salary of an unclassified female teacher amounted to about 40 per cent of a trained male teacher and 50 per cent of a trained female teacher. 7
Female teachers in one teacher schools faced special problems such as isolation and limited opportunities for promotion and further training. The struggles they had with the male bureaucracy of the Education Department are, if not well known, at least well documented through official correspondence stored in the Queensland state archives. To understand what it was really like to be a female teacher in Queensland between the wars it is necessary to examine the lives of each of these teachers and become aware of the problems and struggles they experienced.
This monograph examines the careers of five women who taught at the Loganholme one teacher school from 1915 to 1944: Isabella Keys (2.11.15 - 29.2.16); Daisy Elizabeth Colledge (15.11.16 - 7.9.26, on special leave 8.3.26 - 7.9.26); Bridget Collins (19.3.26 - 31.12.31); Lillian Agnes McQuire (1.1.32 - 30.9.32); Mary Beatrice Hickey (1.1.33 - 23.1.44). By closely retelling and analysing their teaching careers in an historical context it is hoped that some inferences can be made about the personal experiences of women involved in the teaching profession in Queensland. These five women had diverse talents and differing backgrounds but they shared a common desire to teach, whether that desire stemmed from need or vocation. They also shared certain disadvantages which seemed to be the lot of their
sex and generation - a lack of training, and limited opportunities for promotion throughout their careers.
The experiences of these five women tell the story of what it was like to be a woman in the teaching profession between the wars. In this monograph we give the underpaid, undervalued, under promoted woman a voice at last so that she may teach us once more.
Isabella Keys: The problem of isolation
Isabella Keys was the first female teacher of Loganholme State School. Her time at Loganholme was very brief, less than four months, however her career is worthy of discussion because it highlights an issue which many women in remote communities faced - isolation. The lone female teacher often found herself in a remote place removed from family, friends and social diversions and at the mercy of the community which may, or may not, have extended its hand in friendship. Isabella Keys, a single woman, whose career included many years spent teaching in provisional schools was no exception.
Isabella had begun her teaching career in 1892 at the age of 18, as a provisional school teacher, at Albionville with a salary of 65 pounds a year. This salary was the wage of a provisional school teacher in a school where the average attendance was less than thirty. Later Isabella taught at provisional schools such as Bustard Head, Fairymead, Cumonju and Rockmount. Provisional schools, such as those Isabella taught in, were always small schools that were established in lieu of state schools in remote areas where attendance was small. At this time, before a state school could be established the average attendance at the school had to be over thirty. The provisional school teacher worked in the isolated communities where a suitable 'school room' could be provided by the parents. Sometimes a tent or a bark hut would suffice. The class was small, between 12 and 30, the equipment was primitive and the school environment was, consequently, often under stimulating.
Isabella resigned from her first teaching post at Albionville after only two years and it is written on her teaching records that she was 'dissatisfied with the place'. 8 Life as a provisional school teacher at Albionville, in a small remote community, must have been an isolating and under stimulating experience for Isabella Keys who was only twenty years old when she resigned from this posting in 1894.
Isabella may not have resigned so quickly if she could have foreseen what her next posting would be like. In 1895 Isabella became the provisional school teacher at Bustard Head, a remote lighthouse school on an island off Gladstone. Here she taught the children of the few families employed to run the light house and would have boarded with one of these families, her board being paid by the Marine Department. Her meagre salary at Bustard Head was only 30 pounds per annum and certainly would not have compensated for the inconveniences of life at the remote settlement where the monotony would only have been broken by the arrival, once a month, of the storeboat. Isabella was but one of many teachers posted to this settlement, most of them women, who never stayed longer than they had to. One male bureaucrat remarked, in 1901, after yet another resignation from a female teacher at Bustard Head 'It is difficult to get women to take such places or to stay in them. Can we offer more salary?' .9
It is not surprising that in 1895 Isabella Keys, eager to leave Bustard Head, left seven days early on the supply boat for the summer vacation. This was perhaps unavoidable, because the supply boat came to Bustard Head so infrequently and Isabella agreed to reopen the school seven days early upon her return. 10 It is unlikely that she ever did this, however, because her teaching records show that, in 1896 Isabella was teaching at the provisional school at Fairymead on what must have seemed to her the much more substantial salary of 70 pounds. She taught at Fairymead until 1900 when she became the teacher of the provisional school at Cumonju for a salary of 90 pounds, the highest salary she had yet achieved in her teaching career. However, in 1901 she was transferred to Rockleigh Provisional School, her fifth school in seven years, and her salary went down to 60 pounds per annum. This school was closed in 1903 because of small attendance and Isabella was transferred to Rockmount Provisional School and paid a salary of 70 pounds per annum.11
Throughout her career Isabella received wages which were substantially lower than male teachers in provisional schools. She received from 1892 until the early 1900s wages which represented about 75 % -82 % of the wage of a male holding a similar position. Whether Isabella ever felt annoyed by this discrepancy is unknown.
However, many women involved in the Queensland Teachers' Union did. A recent writer has argued that women within the union were engaged in an equal pay war on two fronts in that on one level they had to fight their employer for wage justice while at another level they had to struggle against the entrenched sexism of the union movement. 12
In 1897 female teachers began their struggle to force the union to adopt equal pay as a union policy. It would be an uphill battle, for male teachers feared that equal pay would, inevitably, lead to overall salary decreases. Female teachers, they declared, didn't do the same work as men. Furthermore, females, they decided, were only employed because they were cheap. Equal pay was not enshrined as Queensland Teachers' Union policy until 1922 and female teachers waited until 1971 before equal pay was finally achieved.13
Isabella Keys had to endure a difficult, lonely life as a provisional school teacher.
The conditions in which she worked were not always satisfactory. Her career was blighted by fluctuating salary levels and the relative insecurity of her position in schools which could be closed as soon as attendance levels dropped. Considering all these factors it is not surprising that Isabella Keys resigned from teaching in 1908 to become a nurse. What is, initially, surprising is that she would want to return to teaching in 1915 at Loganholme State School at the age of 41. Delving into the circumstances, however, Loganholme would have seemed a much better prospect than any of Isabella's previous schools. Loganholme was a state school, not a provisional school, and Isabella Keys was given the position of Head Teacher there.
It was definitely a good career move for Isabella to obtain a position as Head Teacher at Loganholme.
There was a big difference between the provisional and state school teacher in salary and status. Provisional school teachers were usually unclassified, meaning they had little or no formal teacher training and had not been through the pupil teacher training system or the Teachers' College which was established in 1914, although it did not begin training primary teachers until 1921. They were paid less than teachers in state schools and often worked under worse conditions. Before 1909 unclassified teachers had mainly been placed in charge of provisional schools but, in 1909, the Department of Public Instruction reduced the number of provisional schools to around sixty so many of the former provisional schools became state schools and the unclassified teachers, who were mostly female, remained in charge of these small one teacher schools.14 Although the school at Loganholme had never been classed as a provisional school it was a very small state school and the position of head-teacher at Loganholme one teacher school was not as distinguished as the position of teacher in the larger city schools.
Isabella Keys also had personal reasons for resuming her teaching career at Loganholme. She took over the school from her brother, Thomas Phelam Keys, and boarded with her sister-in-law in the teacher's residence. In 1915 Thomas Phelam Keys, the Head Teacher at Loganholme State School, joined the tropical forces and went away to New Guinea to serve in The Great War. He left behind a school without a teacher and a school residence occupied by his wife, Hilda, and their three children. He had recommended that Lillian Cook, acting temporary at Runcorn, be transferred to Loganholme.15 Cook only taught at Loganholme for eleven days.
During this time, from 18 to 29 October, she must have boarded with Hilda Keys and family. On 22 October Thomas' s sister, Isabella, wrote to the Department asking to be reinstated as a teacher so that she could fill the teaching position which her brother had left at Loganholme. She had added, perhaps by way of convincing the Department to give her the job, that her sister-in-law, who still occupied the teacher's residence, would prefer her rather than a stranger as a boarder:
My brother Mr T.P. Keys, who recently joined the tropical forces, was in charge of the State School at Loganholme. I wish to apply for the position which is now vacant. The Department have granted my brother's wife the use of the school residence during his absence. Naturally, as the coming teacher must board with her, she would prefer one of her husband's relatives as a teacher. 1~
The Department must have been aware that it would have been impossible to appoint a male teacher to the posting as the residence was occupied by the former teacher's wife. In any case male teachers were becoming scarce as more male teachers enlisted. In 1915 99 male teachers or 6% of the total male teaching staff in Queensland resigned. Undoubtedly many of these men, like Thomas Keys, enlisted.
However a 6 % resignation rate was not unusual. Up until 1922 the annual
resignation rate for male teachers was always 5 % or higher. In the years of World War One the rate peaked at 8% in 1918.17
Although Isabella had not taught since 1908 she was reinstated as Acting Head Teacher of Loganholme State School on the grounds of twelve years satisfactory service. Everything seemed to fall into place and Isabella must have been looking forward to her new position. But she was not to stay there long. In many respects teaching Loganholme in 1915 must have been a lonely and isolating experience.
As a female teacher and the sister of a soldier Isabella would possibly have faced particular problems teaching at Loganholme school. There remains some evidence which suggests that Isabella and her sister-in-law, Hilda, were isolated from the predominantly German community at Loganholme and that some antagonism was felt towards them. To understand just how isolated two women could be in Loganholme in 1915 one has to remember that Loganholme at that time was an isolated, farming community, linked to Beenleigh, the nearest town, by ferry across the Logan river. 18 The majority of the farmers were German, many of them descendants of families who had pioneered the district as early as the 1860s. Dairy farming and cotton and sugar growing were the major industries. 19 Ten out of the twenty pupils in Isabella Key's class were from Lutheran families20 and, given that the roots of most family trees were in Germany, it is not surprising that there was antagonism towards the Keys family as Thomas was a soldier fighting the Germans in New Guinea.
Generally it may be said that the lads of the Logan district were rather apathetic towards the allied cause. This is demonstrated by a comment made in the Beaudesert Times on 29 October 1915:
.. there is not a great rush of men from the district anxious to fight for their country in the hour of peril. There are still plenty of eligible young men in the Logan district, and the surprising thing is that it takes so much coaxing to get them to step forward when their country and Empire Calls. Surely they are not all bashful. Or is it that they are waiting to be fetched by the conscription sergeants. We would not be surprised if early in the New Year the Federal Go,ernment cast the drag net of conscription, and thus forced all the unwilling ones to bear their share of the national defence.21
As well as coping with the tensions, and perhaps the conflicting loyalties, of a migrant community in a time of war, Isabella would have seen her pupils' families struggling to cope with a serious drought which had dried out the Albert and Logan rivers and reduced the river at Beaudesert to a 'mere trickle' .22 Certainly it was not an easy place for Isabella to resume her teaching career.
Undoubtedly she had been influenced by her sister-in-law's plight when she accepted the Loganholme position, but she may also have been influenced by economic considerations. Teaching was a secure job with a regular income, in Isabella's case, 90 pounds a year. According to Noeline Kyle the steady income teaching provided was an incentive to join, and perhaps, in Isabella's case, rejoin the ranks:
Teaching may have been scorned by the middle and upper class lady but the respectable lower and working class lady was only too eager to join the ranks of a profession which promised a regular, if low salary, professional training and promotion at a relatively high level.23
Although Isabella Keys was only at Loganholme from October until the end of February the following year, she was inspected, after two and a half weeks, by the District Inspector, W. Earnshaw. Earnshaw gave her a satisfactory report but felt her methods were 'mechanical'. Her methods, he thought, should be more 'observational' and her lessons more prepared.24 If Isabella's methods were mechanical it was not entirely her fault. Teaching in difficult, under stimulating conditions in provisional schools for many years and never having any formal training or professional contact with her peers, is it any wonder her methods were 'mechanical'?
In his report Earnshaw appeared to be impressed by Isabella's classroom government, (discipline), but although the children were 'quiet, orderly and worked with industry' he noted that the 'abrupt "yes and "no was common' .25 This seems a small matter but when put in the context of the dissatisfaction Hilda Keys began to express, early in 1916, about the hostility of the general community towards her and her family it seems that the inspector's observation could reflect a general antagonism felt towards Isabella also.
In March 1916 Hilda wrote to a Mr G. Story in the hope that he, on her behalf, would write to the then Under Secretary for Education, J.D. Story, and arrange for a rent allowance to be paid to he so that she could move from the school residence in Loganholme:
This arrangement (staying in the teachers residence while Thomas was at war) was very satisfactory to me at first but I am sorry to say that it is getting less so every day, you know something of the community here and you can imagine that things are not pleasant for me now that my husband is a soldier.
This is a rather lonely place and the truth is that I am afraid to live here any longer with my children.
Do you think the Department would allow me a sum equal to the weekly rent of my home if I were to vacate it and live elsewhere?
Would you be good enough to do what you can for me in this matter for the sake of old times?
Your sincere friend, Hilda M. Keyi16
J .D. Story refused to provide Mrs Keys with a rent allowance to move out of the teacher's residence but she vacated the house in June 1916 claiming that the situation at Loganholme had 'forced' her to leave.27 In 1917 she lodged a formal complaint to the Education Department saying that she had been forced to leave the residence and stating that 'a German on three occasions came to the residence and used insulting and indecent language to her'; another German refused to leave her house when he visited at night and her children were subjected to hooting and jeering.28 A subsequent police inquiry found no evidence to support her claims and Hilda Keys was again denied rental assistance.29
The point remains to be considered, however, as to why Hilda Keys would go to all the trouble to move her family of three to Beenleigh if she did not genuinely feel that the community was hostile towards her. The resignation of Isabella Keys in February 1916 for the official reason 'dissatisfied with the place', despite her promising inspector's report, further reinforces the view that both women had experienced significant personal discomfort.
Ethel Ryan, an unclassified teacher from Veresdale Scrub, was transferred to Loganholme State School as Acting Head Teacher around March in 1916. No record of her time there remains and by October she had left. The position was offered to a Mrs Jackson but she declined. In October J.D. Story, the Under Secretary for the Department of Public Instruction wrote that the Department was trying to 'arrange for the transfer of a married male teacher' to Loganholme and that every effort would be made to 'fill the vacancy with the least avoidable delay'. As an after thought he added:
Had the residents been able to find accommodation for a single female teacher other than at the teacher's residence, the Department could have filled the position a considerable time ago . 30
In the end a widowed female teacher, Daisy Elizabeth Colledge, was appointed as Acting Head Teacher at Loganholme.
Daisy Elizabeth Colledge: A brilliant teacher, but a woman nevertheless
Daisy Elizabeth Colledge became Head Teacher of Loganholme State School in 1916. She was to remain at the school for the next ten years and all records show her to have been a very successful and dedicated teacher. Despite her obvious talents, her time at Loganholme was marred by an unhelpful bureaucratic system and by the perceptions of the male school committee who recognised her value as a teacher but felt that, because she was a woman, she was naturally deficient in some areas. In some ways Daisy was damned for being too womanly and damned for not being womanly enough. Although Daisy was a widow and she relied on her salary to support her family, teaching was not just a financial necessity, for her it was a vocation. This point becomes clear when the personal history of Daisy Elizabeth Colledge is considered.
Daisy Elizabeth Colledge was born on 24 August 1871. She was the fifth child of seven children who were born to William Robert Twine and Ann Twine (nee Shield). She had been named after an older sister who had died young, Isabella Ann (nicknamed 'Daisy') and family members, consequently, preferred not to call her 'Daisy' but knew her, affectionately, as 'Lil'. Daisy, her three surviving brothers, and her sister, Rose Annie, spent a comfortable childhood in Roma. Their father served one term as mayor in 1880. Her family was well to do and had a vineyard in Roma called 'Daisybank' possibly named after the first 'Daisy'. The Twines did not neglect their children's education and had enough money to educate both Daisy and her sister Rose through private tutors. This practice was not uncommon among wealthy middle class families. According to the family historian, Mabel Kelly, Daisy and Rose led 'secluded lives' but at some stage the family moved to Wallumbilla where Daisy was to meet her future husband, John Colledge, and life was to change forever.31
At Wallumbilla a committee, which included her father and John Colledge, petitioned the Department of Public Instruction to establish a school there. It was several years before a provisional school was started, and in the meantime Daisy taught the local children for two hours each day. That Daisy decided to teach voluntarily can be seen as an indication of both a love of teaching and the privileged social position of her family.
When the Department of Public Instruction finally established a provisional school at Wallumbilla Norman Louis Bell, a provisional school teacher from Tamborine, was transferred there.32 In 1894 Daisy Elizabeth Twine became assistant teacher at Wallumbilla Provisional School. This was her first teaching position with the Department and her record states that she had had no previous training as a teacher.
Daisy Colledge (on left) with her mother and sister Rose. (Photograph supplied by Mrs Una Hession)
The official reports of Daisy's first years of teaching with the Department of Public Instruction stated that she was 'improving in skill' and that she was both industrious and painstaking with 'fair discipline' .33 For a female teacher in her first year to merit such a report from an inspector must have meant that Daisy was a wonderful teacher, a born teacher. After a year at W allumbilla Daisy was transferred to Kilham where she remained until she resigned to marry John Colledge in 1898. Apparently the union was not approved of by the Twine family and the couple ran away to be married.34
In 1898 there was no regulation, as there was from 1902, which deemed that married women should resign from their teaching positions.35 Yet it would have been expected of Daisy that she would resign once she was married. Married women, at least those in the middle classes, did not work. Their sphere of interest was in the home. The doctrine of separate spheres, popularised by Queen Victoria, doomed Victorian women to a domestic life in the home. The predominant social attitude was that men and women had been created differently and females must not challenge males in the economic sphere. A woman's responsibility was to her husband, her children and her home.36 The extent to which this social attitude preordained the lives of women is shown by the fact that when compulsory resignation for married women was introduced, in 1902, the percentage of women resigning from the service did not change. 37
The concept of differing roles of men and women has lingered on into the twentieth century and in 1921 a woman writing to the Brisbane Courier argued, 'Women are equal to men but their callings are as distinct as two poles. If woman would do any real good in the world, let her look to her home ... '. 38 Teaching in the elementary grades was considered suitable practice for marriage and child rearing. In society's view teaching was either a temporary job for the pale young woman looking for a husband or a permanent job for the waspish old maid who never managed to find one.39
The marriage of Daisy and John produced one child, Rex, but sometime in the early 1900s John Colledge died and Daisy was left to raise Rex with the support of her mother and her sister, Rose. Una Hession, Daisy's niece, remembers that Rex was a very spoilt young man. Ironically he was not spoilt by Daisy, but by her sister Rose who had once been fond of John Colledge.40 It is possible that, after John Colledge's untimely death, Daisy had to support her small family and, consequently, went back to teaching. For a time she and her sister, Rose, ran a small private mixed school at Wooloowin, where they and their ageing mother then lived. Rose taught music at the school while other subjects were taught by Daisy. Una remembers this school being in Kent road. Her sisters were educated at Daisy and Rose's school for a time but Una, being only three when the school was in operation, about 1909, only remembers playing in the sunlit garden outside the school. 41 Daisy and Rose, for reasons unknown, were unable to keep this school running. It is likely that financial
strains necessitated Daisy's return to the state school system. After her husband's early death she was left with a young boy to raise and she chose to educate him privately. Possibly Daisy needed a regular wage so she returned to teaching within the state education system. In 1916 she came to Loganholme.
When Daisy Colledge started teaching at Loganholme school she was 45 years old, an established teacher and a good one. These points are borne out by her success at Loganholme school. After only a few school months at Loganholme Daisy was inspected, for the second time, by District Inspector Gripp in May 1917. He gave her a glowing report noting that, since his last inspection, there had been 'considerable improvement' in the proficiency and progress of the pupils. Mr Gripp commented that Daisy's government, or discipline, was 'good' and that the children were 'well behaved' and applied themselves 'honestly and diligently to their tasks'.
Daisy seems to have had good organisational skills, the pupils being classified into 'suitable' grades, the time table was 'fairly well constructed' and the work 'carefully laid out' and the pupils 'regularly tested'. Gripp stated that the methods Daisy used were 'very fair - on the whole on intellectual lines and effectively applied'. According to the District Inspector Daisy Colledge had achieved marked success in three key areas: classroom discipline, organisation and methods.42 A report such as this represented strong praise, for male or female teacher, from a school inspector at this time.
According to Alison Prentice, who studied the feminisation of teaching in British North America and Canada during the later half of the nineteenth century, feminisation inspired great debate among educational administrators over the governmental abilities of women. Male administrators were traditionally prejudiced against the achievements of women teachers in some areas, preferring to believe that female teachers had inferior governmental skills and mental capabilities:
The most pressing issue as far as most of them were concerned was the question of discipline. The relative mental ability of females was a consideration with some concerned educators but most nineteenth century critics were far more worried about how school children could be governed by women.41
The feminisation of teaching was achieved slightly later in Australia than in British North America and Canada. Teaching became 'feminised' in Queensland around 1884 when female teachers represented 52 % of the total number (1152) of teachers.
When Daisy Colledge first came to Loganholme, in 1916, females teachers represented 58 % of the total number of teachers and, by the end of World War I, in 1918, 2,540 teachers of the total 4,169 were women. This meant that female teachers then represented 61 % of the total number of teachers. 44
The feminisation of teaching in Queensland generated a small hysteria among male administrators who, like administrators in British America and Canada, questioned the governmental abilities and the mental capabilities of women. Evidence of this
which displayed the open prejudice of the public service against the appointment of females to responsible posts for reasons concerning economics, administration and family responsibilities. In 1919 an equal pay claim for female teachers was disputed by J.D. Story before the Court of Industrial Arbitration. Story denied the efficiency of female teachers and claimed that if the equal pay motion succeeded the Department might find teaching to be women's work and provide a salary able to keep one woman but not a man and his family. In the end, Judge Mccawley rejected the equal pay claim:
Females are more suitable for kindergarten work and the teaching of girls; males for the teaching of boys, certainly the older boys. Females may be unsuitable for the control of mixed schools . ... but it has not been and cannot be proved that the work of men and women teachers is equal. . .. the work the female teacher can do, taken as a whole, and the work she does do, differ in kind and quality from the
work of the average male teacher. ,a
In a very round about way Mccawley was trying to express the scandalous attitudes of the male administrators of the time. In the areas of discipline, organisation, and classroom methodology female teachers were regarded as being out classed by their male counterparts and so, not being able to do the 'same' work were not able to claim the same pay.
Throughout 1917 Daisy had 23 pupils in her class of differing ages and potential.
She probably faced the problems that most teachers in one teacher schools faced.
Problems such as those highlighted by District Inspector Farrell, in the Teacher's Journal, in 1939. These problems were concerned with: difficulties for the teacher in obtaining adequate supervision and instruction from peers; lack of stimulation for pupil and teacher because of small number in each grade; limited time for personal contact between teacher and pupil because of the numbers of grades requiring tuition; lack of community spirit due to scattered housing and long hours of labour;
poor teaching material; recent changes in teachers which may have had repercussions on learning; and farm work done by children interfering with school time. 46 Given the context in which Daisy was required to teach, her achievements in this school were considerable.
From 1916 to 1921 W. Gripp continued to inspect Daisy's school at Loganholme.
Each year the reports grew more favourable, with the pupils apparently making regular progress which was 'sound and intelligent'. Daisy continued to organise the school well and as Gripp commented in 1919, 'with a good deal of vigour, skill and success'. 47 Apart from the required syllabus Daisy also taught history, drawing, singing, civics and morals.
In 1918 the former Head Teacher of Loganholme State School, Thomas Phelam Keys, was discharged from tropical service at Rabaul in Papua New Guinea.
However, he did not return to his position as Head Teacher at Loganholme but was transferred to Bunya State School. At Bunya, Thomas, an unclassified teacher, was
Daisy Colledge gained permanent status as Head Teacher of Loganholme State School. Reflecting on the number of casualties the Department suffered during the war Keys was lucky to return at all. Of 396 Queensland teachers enlisted to serve in World War I, 67 were killed or died of illness, 115 were wounded and 2 were listed ' as missing or held as prisoners at the war's end.49
In 1922 a new inspector, A. Mutch, was appointed to the district. Mutch was quite sympathetic towards female teachers. In 1916 he had openly stated, in a report, that 'the female class teacher in a mixed school is the equal, if not the superior, of the male class teacher. She is as sound in her instruction as a male and, as a rule, creates a better tone'. 50 His initial inspection of Daisy Colledge was favourable. He commented that both the government and the methods used were 'satisfactory' and said that 'a quiet pleasing tone' pervaded the school, the pupils being 'well in hand'.
He added, however, that Mrs Colledge 'would do well to prepare the lessons on the lines suggested 'so that the proficiencies of classes IV and V would be in keeping with III and II at the next inspection' .51
Mr Mutch' s subsequent reports of Daisy Colledge were favourable, however he often found the need to advise her on some small detail, for example in 1924 he reminded her politely that 'the secret of success in the teaching of comprehension lies in the teacher's preparation'52 and in 1925 when he advised her 'as to nature study'. 53 It was, of course, Mr Mutch' s job to advise Daisy but this advisory role subtly reflects the approach a male dominated bureaucracy developed towards the curriculum and the teaching practices of the female dominated staff. Michael Apple, a prominent social historian, has argued that as teaching in the western world became feminised male bureaucracies increased the external controls over female teachers by determining the curriculum and the way it was taught:
The fact that most elementary school teachers then and now are women provides us with a key element in understanding why there have often been attempts by state bureaucrats, industry, and (a largely male body of) academics to control the curricular and teaching practices in classrooms . 54
Apple argued that, historically, as more women turned to teaching as a career the job became depowered and controlled by men in better positions in the hierarchy. 55
Daisy's success as a teacher in Loganholme School was evident. Una Hession, who often visited her aunt on school holidays, remembers Daisy as being a good teacher and well liked in the Loganholme area. 56 Yet, despite favourable reports, Mr Mutch inanaged to find one thing which he thought Daisy, as a teacher, was lacking - a maternal feeling towards her students, particularly the older girls. The last report he wrote for Daisy Colledge at Loganholme in February 1926 was one which simultaneously praised Daisy's disciplinary powers and skilled teaching and condemned her aloof professionalism:
A quiet earnest tone pervades the school. The puplls make their movements admirably and they
both in oral and written tests with an abllity well above the average. The government is well nigh highly satisfactory. However, seeing that the teacher has her puplls so well in hand she would, I think, do well to encourage the bigger girls to talk in a simple and natural way to her about their work and aims for after school life, not as one of whom they stand in fear but rather as to an interested and experienced friend. 57
Perhaps Daisy was aloof yet, professionally, she was a successful teacher. One wonders if a male teacher, with the same teaching style as Daisy Colledge, would have been criticised in the same way. One prevalent historical image of the female teacher comes from the 1840s, in the thinking of Friedrich Froebe!, educational philosopher and founder of the kindergarten system. This image is that of the ideal teacher as the 'mother made conscious'. 58 It is an image which, Carolyn Steedman argues, inevitably undermines the status of women and, subsequently, of teachers.
According to Steedman, work with children attracts low status and the combination of the two roles, teaching and motherhood, reflects what is seen to be fit work for women. She argues that the social context into which the idea of the teacher as the 'mother made conscious' was disseminated was the feminisation of teaching. Though Steedman is speaking within the context of British schooling her arguments are applicable to female teachers within the Queensland system. She makes one crucial point which seems very relevant to the comments Inspector Mutch made of Daisy Colledge' s teaching style in 1926:
The precise virtue of the mother made conscious is that she doesn't have to be clever: feeling, intuition, sympathy and empathy is all. 59
In all other respects Daisy Colledge was an excellent teacher but, in Mr Mutch' s eyes, she failed in her most important role - teacher as mother. Daisy Colledge could be clever, she could discipline and organise the class but where were her feeling and intuition which were, after all, the essence of her womanliness?
Marjorie Fels (nee Suhr) who attended the state school at Loganholme recalls that Daisy was quite a stern teacher, but no more than most teachers were in those days.
She emphasised good manners in the classroom with regular class readings from the Good Manners Chart. Marjorie recalls one incident in the classroom when she was a very young child and wouldn't get up from the floor although Mrs Colledge asked her to. Two of the older boys tried to assist in resolving the situation but Marjorie slapped the one boy when he tried to pick her up and bit the other. Mrs Colledge continued to demand that Marjorie get up off the floor and Marjorie called her an 'old cow' under her breath. Daisy kept young Marjorie in until 5 pm that day, an occurrence which Marjorie has never forgotten. Nevertheless, Marjorie remembers that Daisy always showed a genuine concern for her pupils. When Marjorie was very ill, with what was thought to be diphtheria, Mrs Colledge came to visit her at home.
By the time Daisy left Loganholme she was 55 years old. Marjorie says that she was one of those 'reserved kinds' of people. All the kids at Loganholme referred to her as 'old Daisy'. ro
Furthermore, Daisy may have been strict and aloof but she never found it necessary to resort to corporal punishment to maintain discipline. There are no records of corporal punishment in the Loganholme State School corporal punishment register for the years Daisy Colledge was Head Teacher at Loganholme. Thomas Phelam Keys, however, found it necessary to administer corporal punishment to boys and girls on 165 occasions over 5 years for various behaviours such as 'disobedience', 'telling lies', 'neglect of home work' and 'calling teacher names'. For these offences he usually administered 4 to 6 strokes of the cane. The female teachers at Loganholme in general did not use corporal punishment. Isabella Keys administered the cane twice, in 1915, to two boys for talking. The cane was not used again at Loganholme until 1947. The punishment register has many entries before 1914 and again after 1948 and, in these years there were male Head Teachers at Loganholme. 61 Inspector Mutch seemed to have made a good assessment of the atmosphere in the classrooms of female teachers when he said that the female teacher 'as a rule, creates a better tone'. 62
In examining the experiences of Daisy Colledge at Loganholme it can be seen that she was regarded as either not womanly enough or too womanly. Her gender confounded her obvious success at Loganholme. To Mutch there were elements of her teaching style which weren't feminine enough. To the school committee Daisy seemed too feminine and incapable of maintaining the school and the residence simply because she was a woman.
By the time Daisy Colledge arrived at Loganholme the school and the residence, having being built in 1873, were already 43 years old. The house was ridden with white ants and the fencing was badly in need of repair. Daisy had five male school committee members and a slow bureaucratic system to rely on to help her fix things up. The progress was slow. From 1918 to 1925 numerous letters flowed from the school committee and Daisy Colledge to the Under Secretary about white ants in the kitchen and in the front and back rooms of the school residence. In 1919 Daisy Colledge wrote to the Under Secretary of the Department of Public Instruction:
I have the honour to state that the white ants have made their appearance again in the kitchen and on one of the joists which join the landing to the verandah. They are evidently working from the fire place as no trace can be seen on the stumps. I told the secretary about it and asked if he could do anything to get rid of them but, so far, he has not moved in the matter and I don't know of anyone who will . 63
Nine days later, on 14 February, the secretary of the school committee, J. J Dennis, wrote to the Department of Public Instruction saying that he could not find white ants anywhere in the school house except in two of the steps and had consequently procured some ant poison to use on the steps. On 26 February H. W. Stoodley reported to the Acting Under Secretary and Government Architect that the white ants had entered through the chimney, which is where Daisy Colledge had thought they were in the first place! Stoodley wrote that:
As the kitchen is an old detached bullding, constructed principally of hardwood, it is not advisable to incur the expense of removing the chimney, which would be only sure remedy to utenninate the ants."'
Stoodley recommended that one half gallon of ant poison be consigned to the Beenleigh district and that Mrs Colledge be advised as to how to use it. So began Daisy Colledge's years of struggle with the white ants and half- hearted bureaucratic attempts to appease her with gallons of poison, which evidently did not work for long.
In February 1925 Daisy Colledge wrote to the Under Secretary that the white ants were in the school residence again and that she had used up all the poison. 65 By 1923 the residence was in very poor condition as the 'stove was so worn as to be beyond repair', there were holes in the kitchen floor and the hearth was crumpled and dangerous.66 Daisy moved out of the residence sometime between 1923 and 1925 and possibly boarded with a family in the district during the school week.
However, she still kept some furniture in the house and desired the residence to be white ant free. The Department was not obliging. In April, 1925 the Inspector of Works wrote to the Under Secretary suggesting that before the Department did anything about the school residence at Loganholme they should consider the necessity of repairing the building for, the inspector argued, 'the school is on the down grade, there being an attendance of only eleven children'. The residence, he said, could be sold or disposed of. 67 The saga continued and, at one stage in 1926, the white ants moved into the school lavatory and the situation was drastic because, Daisy wrote, they had 'eaten the seat and made it unfit for use' .68
Daisy had similar problems with the school committee and the Department over the school fencing. She drove a buggy from the school to Beenleigh and found it impossible to keep her horse within the confines of the school fence, which was in bad need of repair. In March, 1921 she wrote to the Under Secretary saying, 'I cannot keep my horse in now and I cannot do without one for I have to go to Beenleigh for everything I need'. 69 The fence was an old split rail fence and the Department's estimated cost of repairs was twenty-eight pounds sixteen shillings and sixpence. 70 In August the school committee decided to act upon the matter·:
My committee desires to draw your attention to the present state of the fence enclosing school grounds. Quite a lot of it is down, and is giving teacher a lot of trouble with her horse as he goes two mlles away every chance he gets; the committee has put three new gate posts in front of school but consider the fencing a bit beyond us.11
Such were the sentiments of this hardworking group of farming men who had probably spent their lives fencing in cattle. In August the Department of Public Instruction wrote to the School Secretary that the fencing would receive further consideration when it was known what funding was available for school building in the current financial year.72 The Department finally approved the sum of four pounds ten shillings, a fragment of the original estimate, to be expended by the school
committee for the ·purchase of materials to repair the fence using their own labour. 73 Daisy's struggles with the inactivity of both the School Committee and the Department of Public Instruction are clear. At Loganholme, Daisy had to contend with a committee of men who seemed to resent time spent helping the female teacher get rid of white ants or putting up a new fence. In Brisbane Daisy had to contend with a group of male bureaucrats who did not seem to care about the quality of life of the female teacher at Loganholme.
From 1923 to 1926 Daisy Colledge had some problems at home which required attention. It is possible that at this time her mother was seriously ill and required her.
In 1923 Miss Argaet was appointed to Loganholme school as the re~ieving teacher.
About this time Mrs Colledge was applying for a transfer closer to her home at Wooloowin. A meeting of the parents to discuss the situation led to the following letter being sent by the Secretary of the School Committee, I.J.Dennis, to the Under Secretary:
I have been instructed by a meeting of the parents at the above school held last night to write as follows. There have been some rumours that our teacher, Mrs D. E. Colledge might be transfe"ed from here & the above meeting asks if you could see your way to pennanently appoint the present relieving (sic) teacher Miss Argaet. The Parents and Children are very pleased with her as a teacher and consider her very suitable for this district & feel that you should be advised of same. They also wish it to be clearly understood that they have no desire for Mrs Colledge to be removed as they have been very pleased by her work and are still.
Yours respectfully I.J.Dennis
Secretary
School Committee14
This attempt at self determination by the parents of the children attending Loganholme school came to nought. The school committee was advised that Miss Argaet was to be transferred to the state school at Lake View. Mrs Colledge was to remain at Loganholme for the following two years. In July 1924, Daisy Colledge wrote to the Under Secretary for the Department of Public Instruction requesting leave to open the school at 10am on Mondays:
I also wish to ask if I may open school each Monday at ten o'clock, as I go home each weekend to see my Mother, who is still in very delicate health, and to help my sister who has the care of mother & is herself in very indifferent health.
At present I get the train that leaves Central about twenty past five on Monday morning &
arrive in Beenleigh at seven.
q school commenced at ten, I could get the train that arrives about nine. 75
Daisy was granted leave to open the school at ten if she closed at 4pm to make up for the lost time. For once the Department seemed sympathetic and helpful.
In March 1926, Daisy was granted special leave pending her resignation later in the
school committee, C.F.K. Neckar, wrote this somewhat amusing letter to the Department of Public Instruction on 8 March, 1926:
Dear Sir,
With regards to our school at Loganholme our teacher Mrs Colledge has left. ls there any chance of getting a married man to take over the residence as everything is going to wreck and ruin the fences want doing badly and if there was a man about the place things would be very much different. I am one of the committee myself, and very sorry to lose Mrs Colledge as I think it wlll be very hard to get one like her again.
Yours sincerely C.F.K. Neckai"
Basically Neckar' s letter was a backhanded compliment: Daisy was obviously a very capable teacher, but she was a woman and therefore was unable to get things done about the place!
However, official notes written over Neckar's letter reveal that the Department had already chosen an unmarried female to replace Daisy Colledge. Perhaps a one teacher school, in decline, was a more suitable placement for a woman. Whilst official practices within the Public Service mediated against women acquiring head teacher positions in larger mixed schools, women were thought to be -very well suited to head teacher positions in the smaller one teacher schools. In 1915 the Minister for Education, H.F. Hardacre, proclaimed that women in such postings were 'pioneers' .77 Despite the remoteness of many one teacher schools, women usually did not hesitate to take up any positions available as they were glad of the work, although men were not so eager to apply for these less desirable positions.
Speaking in the context of the state education system in New South Wales, Noeline Kyle argues, in the article 'Women's "natural mission but man's real domain' that:
the official policy of staffing smaller remote schools with women teachers (men simply would not go), demonstrates how suitable women were thought to be for some positions in the service.71
There is evidence that an unmarried female teacher called Miss Storey was originally appointed to the school to replace Mrs Colledge. She was informed that the residence was uninhabitable. 79 Apparently Miss Storey did not choose to stay on at Loganholme for no records exist of her ever teaching there. Another unmarried female teacher was appointed in her place. In 1926 Mrs Colledge resigned from the teaching service. Her mother died the following year.
