Loganholme between the wars: the lives of five female teachers: One Teacher School Museum Series: No. 4

The One Teacher School Museum committee in March 1975 secured the original Loganholme state school building when it became available for removal. The century-old building was moved to a site at the Kelvin Grove College of Advanced Education. Its opening by the Governor-General, Sir Zelman Cowan, was a fitting celebration of the centenary of the passing of the 1875 Education Act in the colony of Queensland - often referred to as the free, compulsory and secular act. The one teacher school museum project was developed through the enthusiasm, initially, of Ted O'Rourke, a lecturer at Kelvin Grove, who was the major instigator of the project and was responsible for obtaining the donation of many items in the current museum from schools and the wider community. Some years later, when Kelvin Grove CAE had been amalgamated into the Brisbane College of Advanced Education, the museum was relocated to its present position, adjacent to the rain forest reserve at the Kelvin Grove campus. Following the latest amalgamation of Brisbane CAE with the Queensland University of Technology, the work of the museum has received strong support from both the Education Faculty and QUT administration. This support has enabled the publication of a series of monographs in the One Teacher School Museum Studies series. This monograph is a revised edition of the publication A History of the Loganholme One-Teacher School Museum, produced in 1992. Subsequent research into the history of the school and its teachers has enabled this fuller account to be prepared. Other titles in the monograph series include a study of David Freeman the first headmaster at Loganholme; a study of the collection held by the one-teacher school museum at Kelvin Grove; and a biographical account of the teachers who taught at Loganholme between the world wars. The study of Loganholme school and its teachers represents a neglected part of our educational history. Increasingly it is the small and ordinary stories which are providing valuable historical insights into practices such as education. This school and its teachers, together with the community they served, are presented as case studies of the unremarkable, the unspectacular. Yet it is because of these very characteristics that we are provided with valuable insights into some of the everyday experiences of Queensland schooling of the past.

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.