On Wednesday 29 November 2000 at a forum held by the South Australian Chapter of the Australian College of Education in the new Education Development Centre, invited secondary students were asked what kind of education they saw as necessary in the twenty-first century. They insisted that future education in our society must have a balance between technology and humanity. Will their words be incorporated in the educational document to be presented in April 2001 to record the achievements of Australian education as part of the celebration of Federation?

That document will point the educational way forward. It is expected to show what we have learnt from the past. Will educationists listen to the voices of these young people who want balance and connection, not division. Students from both public and private schools supported this approach. Their understanding of the importance of connection shows how far our society has moved since the early years of the twentieth century. Then ‘technical’ and ‘vocational’ education had limited formal educational connection with ‘humanity’.

This chronologically-ordered collection takes the readers through the felt experiences of those in South Australian technically-oriented schools of the twentieth century towards the future. The title of the opening section, Four Very Special Schools, has been chosen to re-establish, in the mind of the reader, the fact that ‘special’ in educational terms once included, in the 1980s, school-based departmentally-supported programmes for students with diverse gifts and talents.

These early South Australian technically-oriented schools were special in different ways. Adelaide Technical High School selected its students from among the most able primary school students. Art, design and crafts were at the heart of the Girls Central Art School. Skills in areas of technical expertise were the key to Thebarton Technical High School but its right to be considered ‘special’ lies primarily in the methodology established to foster a self-disciplined, student-oriented approach to learning. And a school, like the Marist Brothers’ Technical School in George Street, Thebarton, where at teacher decided that homework was an imposition on students’ time had to be ‘special’ in its own way!

Where was the ‘humanity’ in these early technically-oriented, vocational schools? The sciences, the new late nineteenth century university disciplines that underpinned technical changes, had their place, particularly in boys’ technically-based education. One hundred years on, with a century of major, indeed almost overwhelming technical change not only behind us but encompassing our lives, these young men and women have come to the conclusion that humanity must not be forgotten. Not only must it not be forgotten, it must not be reduced through educational jargon, political parlance or commercial preoccupations to vague statements of social concern.

We have moved a long way from the time when phrases such as ‘You can’t stop progress’ or ‘You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs’ were uncritically accepted. We no longer make assumptions that this or that technical advance will be productive of human or public good. We have begun to ask questions. Governments in developed nations have set up environmental protection authorities with varying degrees of effectiveness.

One of the inventions that has encouraged us to ask questions is photography. The camera introduced a way of seeing that could have almost immediate impact. Out of sight need not mean out of mind because the photographer could focus attention in different ways. Able to move more quickly from place to place as mechanised horse power replaced the horse, photographers brought an expanding world into parlours through magazines. The visual image now complemented the written word more often. At the end of the nineteenth century, when South Australia recognised the need for a wider range of professions to meet changing economic circumstances, social realism in literature and visual interpretation was waking the feelings of readers and viewers. There was a concern that technically-oriented education could narrow the students’ focus and decrease awareness of humanity.

In Oscar Knauerhase’s recollections of Adelaide Technical High School there is reference to the fact that Mr Moyle, the second principal of ATHS, decided that he had to introduce social studies to add an element of humanity to the students’ school experiences. At Thebarton geography was the subject that offered an experience in the humanities. The advantage of geography finally included, through Dr Charles Fenner’s persistence, as a discipline at Adelaide University lay in the fact that it bridged the arts and the sciences. Students aiming for university entrance could not do it: they had to study a language. At the Girls Central Art School the history studied was the history of art. There, the personality of Mary P. Harris, committed as she was to the ideals of the Society of Friends, would have had an impact. Her influence is revealed in Ruth Tuck’s poem honouring her teacher.¹

Where was the ‘humanity’ likely to be in those early schools? It was likely to be found in informal rather than formal settings. For example human dilemmas and discord, tragedy and comedy, might be found in Shakespeare if the English teacher ‘brought him to life’. Humanity might be found through participation in plays such as, As You Like It, produced by Mary P. Harris in the ‘woodland’ of the Botanic Park in 1930 or in Maeterlinck’s play The Blue Bird of Happiness.² As You Like It connected the beautiful and the moral where loyalty triumphed over betrayal and generosity over greed. Extra curricular musical productions at Thebarton Technical High School provided avenues beyond the traditional trade-based skills.³ Students might develop a broader vision, meeting visitors brought into their schools. Sir Douglas Mawson is remembered by contributors who also write of the geological museum in the Brookman Hall as significant in their memory. William Ricketts was brought to the School of Arts and Crafts. With the Girls Central Art School in the same Exhibition Building, his sculptures of Aboriginal people could be studied by girls who would feel the respect in them for the people he sculpted. Who is to say that the influence of his sculptures did not find expression in the art of Jacqueline Hick and Barbara Robertson,⁴ both students at the School of Arts and Crafts.

Humanity demands the engagement of feelings. A student at Adelaide Technical High School regretted that there was no time to explore the highways and byways. A girl at the GCAS delighted in the fun possible in that less rigidly regulated atmosphere. At Thebarton, while a teacher attacked the Dalton Plan as opening the door to laziness, the freedom to work at one’s own pace was appreciated by a student who, however, was frustrated by the failure of teachers to extend him further in mathematics. A teacher at Thebarton was able to connect art and poetry through T.S. Eliot’s imagery of fog curling like a cat as it moved through darkened streets. Connections could be and were being made in unexpected ways.

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