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Clip description
Four women, born in the first half of the 20th century, talk about the expectations they had, as girls, for their own educations. The clip concludes with a montage of historical Education Department films promoting home science schools.
Curator’s notes
The four women interviewed ranged in age at the time of filming from 39 to 82. Since production of the film, the two older women, Bessie Mitchell and Edna Ryan, have passed away. Edna Ryan (1904-1997) had a long and celebrated career as a social reformer, political activist and author. Bessie Mitchell (1909-1998) was the founding principal in 1958 of Cheltenham Girls High School in Sydney, a founding member of the Australian College of Educators the following year, and in 1971 was awarded an MBE for her services to education. The two younger women are Anne Summers and Jean Curthoys. Anne Summers, born in 1945, is a prominent author and columnist with a career in politics and the media. Jean Curthoys, born in 1947, is an academic, author and philosopher.
The interviews are followed by a segment on home science schools. These were a type of intermediate school – vocationally based schools that took children (straight out of primary school) who would not previously have received any post-primary education. Each state in the Australian federation had its version of these schools, and they grew rapidly in number in the wake of the 1926 British Hadow Report on The Education of the Adolescent. The home science intermediate schools, variously known as home science, domestic science or domestic arts schools, trained girls in ‘housewifery’, laundry, needlework and cookery.
