Toowong State School

Name: Toowong State School

Time: 1880 - Current

Epoch: Late 19th Century

Category: State Primary School

Institution Category: Education

Institution Group: Primary

Coordinates: -27.4817783333333, 152.988916666667

Street Address: 37 St Osyth St, Toowong

Suburb: Toowong

Sector: State

Local Study Area: Toowong-St Lucia-Indooroopilly

Study Stage: MBNH Stage 7 Study Areas

Suggest An Edit
Back
View Your Faviourties

Toowong State School was first opened for business in Aston Street on the St. Lucia side of the railway line on 22 January 1880 with 41 boys and 34 girls enrolled. The first Head Teacher was Mr E J Curd, who was assisted by two teachers and a Pupil Teacher. In September 1910, following the opening of a State School at Taringa in 1900, it moved to its present position at St Osyth Street, Toowong. Although Queensland education was influenced by the earlier establishment of National and Normal school system primary education was shaped by the Department of Public Instruction under the Education Act of 1875, whereby:

Primary education for children aged from 6 to 12 was to be compulsory.(This provision was not fully implemented until 1900.)

Education was to be secular, i.e. under the control of the State. (Inconformity with this policy, all assistance to non-vested schools was withdrawn in 1880. This provision occasioned considerable ill-feeling among Roman Catholics and some Anglicans.)

Primary education was to be free.

A Department of Public Instruction was established to administer the Act.

The colonial curriculum drew on reading, writing, and arithmetic (the ‘3Rs), with object lessons (‘show and tell’ lessons), drill and gymnastics, and vocal music were supposed to be taught, but in practice these relatively new subjects were often ignored or poorly taught. Geography, needlework, grammar, history and mechanics were also included in the curriculum at various levels. While some of these subjects were included for their practical usefulness, the main criterion for inclusion of subjects in the curriculum was not their practical value, but their value in disciplining (‘sharpening’) mental faculties such as ‘memory’ and ‘reasoning’.

By 1905, when important syllabus changes were made, the value of subjects was increasingly assessed in terms of their everyday usefulness, and ‘learning by doing’ was stressed. The child rather than the teacher, was becoming the centre of the learning process, at least in theory. These changes in the philosophy of education, combined with attempts to mould the content and methods of teaching to the peculiar geographic conditions of Queensland, were major influences on education for the next six decades.

Geographic Description 1: Inside The Green Belt

Geographic Description 2: Brisbane River

Geographic Description 3: Flood Gullies; Flood Plains; Ridgelines (Steep, several coming off Mount Coot-tha); Valleys

Citations

Toowong History Group Inc; Department of Enviroment & Heritage Protection, Qld Heritage Register citation No.602845; Entry extracted from Queensland Department of Education document, Primary Education, undated.

Image Citations

Toowong State School. Toowong History Group