Share
clip 2Clip description
Children make their way to school. On arrival, they realise their dog has followed them. Before lessons begin, school banking deposits are taken in the classroom by the children’s teacher Mr Lowe. Mr Phillips, of the Commonwealth Savings Bank, arrives and is introduced to Mr Lowe by the Principal. The bell rings and the children desperately try to send their dog home.
Curator’s notes
The clip provides an illustration of school banking procedure in the early 1950s. At the time, it was commonly carried out before school on a weekly or fortnightly basis. In the clip the teacher accepts small deposits from each child and notes them in a log. School Savings Bank accounts earned interest in the same way as other savings accounts. When the child completed schooling, the School Savings account was transferred to an ordinary bank account.
The clip, like the rest of the film, has some amusing tangential segments, generated by the actions of the children. It’s a delightful insight into school life at the time. One of these is the narrative of the dog following the children (who walk and ride bikes) to school – obviously scripted, and obviously designed to capture the attention of the target audience at the outset of the film. Such events were very familiar to schoolchildren at the time. Someone’s dog wreaking havoc on the morning assembly was great fun and a very welcome distraction. Today, it’s much less common for children to walk or ride bikes to school. In addition, being unwittingly followed along the street by the family dog can lead to punitive consequences for it being off the leash. The sequence is a nice example of period-specific humour.
The primary school in the film is very probably Burwood Public School in Sydney’s inner west. At the time of the film’s production, the Australian National Film Board, established only six years earlier, was located at Conder Street, Burwood.
