Wynnum Central State School

Name: Wynnum Central State School

Time: 1886 - 2010

Epoch: Late 19th Century

Category: State Primary School

Institution Category: Education

Institution Group: Primary

Coordinates: -27.4445283333333, 153.171471666667

Street Address: 145 Florence St, Wynnum

Suburb: Wynnum

Sector: State

Local Study Area: Wynnum-Wynnum West-Manly-Lota-Manly West

Study Stage: MBSH Stage 4 Local Study Areas

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The school was built 1886, and closed at the end of 2010, as part of a state plan to centralise Wynnum schools onto one site in Boxgrove Ave. The Wynnum North School was demolished for another Woolworth and a BCC library. 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 (Inconformity with this policy, all assistance to non-vested schools was withdrawn in 1880.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: Outside The Green Belt

Geographic Description 2: Moreton Bay (Southern); Wynnum Creek

Geographic Description 3: Flood Plains (Small); Flood Gullies; Hills; Ridgeline (Wynnum North); Coastal

Citations

Undetermined, Wynnum Central State School: celebrating over 100 years of education: 1896-1996, (Brisbane: Wynnum Central School, 1996); Entry extracted from Queensland Department of Education document, Primary Education, undated.

Image Citations

Wynnum Central State School – Brisbane, 1952. Queensland State Archives, Digital Image ID 4967