Frank Fenner

Among the four boys in our family, I was the only one to go to Thebarton Technical High School, which I did from 1927 to 1930. The first thing that struck me was that instead of walking past five houses in Alexandra Avenue, Rose Park, to reach school, I had to take one tram into town and another out west to Thebarton, so I saw much more of the general public than I had earlier.

Just travelling on two tram journeys each way each day meant that I saw and heard a lot more than I had when I was going to primary school. Another thing was that although both father and mother had come from very poor families, and were not in the least ashamed of it, we were living in what you would call a ‘middle-class’ suburb and the children at school came from middle-class families. At Thebarton I met a very mixed group of boys, as far as their family backgrounds were concerned; much more so than if I had gone to St Peter’s or Prince Alfred’s. I don’t remember having any ‘class consciousness’ except, when first at university, seeing the St Peter’s boys, in particular, as being perhaps somewhat snobbish.

The reason that father sent me there was, I believe, that he thought that the Dalton Plan, which was being followed at that school and no other in South Australia, would prepare me well for university education.³⁸ Unlike teaching at high schools and private schools, where at that time the whole day was occupied with teaching lessons, we were given assignments at the beginning of each week and it was our responsibility to work through them.

As I remember the process, the Dalton Plan worked as follows. On Monday morning we would get our assignments for the week and the appropriate teachers would explain what was needed and give us an idea of where to find out what we needed to know. Practical work, in chemistry, physics, metalwork and woodwork, would be held at fixed times, but reading and writing (theoretical work) was done in our own time. The assignments were handed in and marked by the teachers who then talked with students about what they had done. There was a good deal of flexibility about how many subjects could be done; as I remember it I did some extra ones for the Intermediate exam (nine, I think), but less for the Leaving exam. Another student who lived fairly near me was Jack Bleechmore. He went to the Military College at Duntroon where he took an engineering degree and later became a Major-General in the Royal Australian Army Engineers.

In fact the Dalton Plan suited me very well and certainly made it easier for me to adjust to the independence of university education than some of my contemporaries from the private schools. I also enjoyed the periods of metalwork and wood working, and played regularly in the cricket team.

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