AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941

Chapter XIII
TIME: 1940

Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Appendix

Return History
Contents

The day begins by the rousing of the children at seven o’clock except on Sundays when experience and tradition sanction half-past. Authority has rightly decreed that mattresses must be turned back for airing and as this task is being performed the laggard hears a whistle, shrill and prolonged, from the boys’ playground. This comes from the headmaster as he walks across to the boys’ schoolroom and it means that within two minutes every boy must be in his place for Bible reading. A hasty adjustment of ties, a rapid fastening of buttons, a rush down the stairs and the laggards hasten in on time. The passage for the day from the Scripture Union card is put on the board and when that has been read Bibles are closed and the whole room settles down to a deep impressive silence. The day has begun well.

The big bell summons all to breakfast at half-past seven and girls and boys sit together in the dining room at their appointed places. These places are fixed for a week, and then the girls move one-way and the boys another to ensure new companions, fresh talk and an alteration of waiters. Ten tables are necessary; the tablecloths are always clean; fresh flowers adorn the tables. The food is simple, varied, ample and well-cooked. Porridge may alternate with a prepared cereal; the second dish may be kippers, or breakfast sausage, or scrambled egg, or tomatoes on toast, or fruit, bananas, apples, oranges. Custom seems to decree that oranges shall be cut into and eaten with a spoon, and that apples shall be peeled. Plenty of brown and white bread and butter is eaten by itself or with marmalade or treacle. The drink is milk or tea. The waiters at the ends of the tables have a busy time; they must see that the master or mistress who serves is kept fed with toast and marmalade and coffee; they must clear away the porridge plates and other used crockery; they collect further supplies of food and they get their own meal.

Mid-day dinner consists of meat-roast, cold-stews, liver and bacon, mince, soups, pies, made dishes in variety, two vegetables. The second course appears on a wheeled trolley propelled from the serving hatch to each table by two boys who distribute fruit pies, jam tarts, puddings-boiled, or baked, or milk, as fate may allot.

Tea is the third principal meal; bread and butter, jam and honey, cake, milk or tea take half an hour to consume. And in the middle of the long morning and in the evening after preparation come two snacks, lunch and supper of bread and butter, so that even the weakest may have no reason for fainting by the way.

Just as a moment or two of silence with everyone standing precedes each meal so a short silence prefaces the emptying of the dining hall, soon deserted except for those girls whose duty it is to clear the tables of the final crockery and cutlery.

This office is theirs, and on both sides other duties must be done before assembly at five minutes to nine. Beds must be made and passed, boots cleaned. The long list of offices has been much shortened. A charwoman now sweeps and dusts the schoolrooms, but boys clear the playground of any papers or litter; ink is supplied to inkwells, chalk to teachers’ desks; dusters must be shaken; the changing room is tidied and loose articles claimed; letters are brought and distributed and the daily newspaper must be put on its stand.

Nevertheless the boys find time for football on the playground or cricket at the tree; girls for roller-skating and a little tennis. In season both sexes still spin tops, but games have changed. No more do the boys strive at big ring marbles in the shed; mounty-kitty, that rough and tumble of the nineties, has left hardly a memory behind; duck-stones has disappeared and the tip-cat no longer hurtles through the air. The girls still have their springboard but the swing has gone. Boys and girls, too, use this time for friendly walks and talks along the sacred terrace itself, that very terrace which was made and planted to separate the sexes on their playgrounds so that neither should even glimpse the other.

At five minutes to nine the bell rings. Girls, boys and staff file into the Meeting House for school assembly where congregate boarders and day scholars alike. A short reading, sometimes a hymn, a minute or two of silence, precede division into classes where the formal work of the day begins.

This school work continues until twenty minutes past one. This extended time permits six teaching periods to be included in the morning as well as a long recess and two short ones; for what might have been expected is found to be correct: people do better work in the morning than in the afternoon. Therefore, six periods in the morning and only two in the afternoon give opportunities for more and for better work.

The work of the whole week allows a reasonable time for the material studied. English subjects, the language, history, literature, naturally take up a good deal of time; mathematics and science, including geography, claim a prominent place, and as the School was originally an agricultural school the basis of the science teaching is agricultural. So soils and seeds, rotations and growth are studied theoretically in school and practically on the ‘plots’ beyond the sanatorium. Humanities are not neglected; French and Latin, drawing, painting and music have their due places, and weekly current affairs are studied by juniors and seniors alike.

Return to:
Homepage