Primary School in the 1960's

by Francis Cox

I’m only 65, but primary school today doesn’t much resemble what I remember at Graceville State School. For a start, I went to school in bare feet 9 or 10 months of the year until probably about grade six. The signal for shoes each year was when the cracks in my heels got too deep from the cold. Tough feet were great on the gravel streets of the 2-mile walk to school and I could walk right over prickles until they were really brown and spiky in the late summer.

We all walked or cycled ourselves to school except maybe for the first day. But then neither was there any trouble with that that I can recall. Besides, you usually had a group to shi-ack with on the way.

In the early years, we learned to write on washable slates with chalk except for copy-plate writing where we used pen (quill) and ink in special ruled booklets. Those inkwells caused no end of mischief, mainly for the girls’ pigtails, I am sorry to say. There was LOTS of rote drummed into us. If you walked around the school during class, you would hear the droning from nearly every classroom. I got to do that a bit, because I lucked into being a milk monitor in Grade 3, which meant I went down during class time to take crates of 1/3 pint milk bottles around to each classroom in time for ‘little lunch’. One for everybody. It was a great lurk. You had to make sure the crates weren’t left in the sun though. It could go off fairly quickly. The kids used to play flying saucers flicking the gold foil tops from the bottles.

There were no fans or air-conditioning. If you were lucky you might sit near a window. For someone like me that was also a good place to daydream. I must admit it was pretty hard to learn during the sweltering summers.

Once when our teacher was sick, we had the deputy principal, Mr Hagan. He was grouchy and made us learn the 13 times table, which I still just about remember to this day. Some things even red wine can’t eradicate.

I also got out of class time on a few occasions for the wrong reasons. I think I got the cane three times from the headmaster. Twice on the legs and once on the hand. Since I was guilty each time, I never held a grudge. It didn’t seem to do me much harm. My stepfather used the ironing cord if he got mad, which I think was worse.

At regular morning parades we met in the sun in the quadrangle. We said the Lord’s prayer and sang God Save The Queen. (Nothing about the governor General). In summer, someone fainted almost every day from the sun.

Not too many refinements, but I had a great time at primary school and made friends I still have to this day.