LESSONS THAT LAST
One of the most fascinating responses to our first Lessons That Last column came from Starts At 60 reader Claire.
Claire began her schooling in a one-teacher school with just 25 children. Her grandfather had donated the land for the school years earlier. The school bus wasn’t really a bus at all, it was a yellow Land Rover with benches along the sides and a canvas-covered back, driven by the teacher.
The children called it the “Yellow Peril”.
Already, it sounds like a story from another Australia.
The playground equipment was built by local fathers, most of them farmers, and there were swings made from galvanised pipe, wooden seats and enough freedom to give modern school principals sleepless nights.
“We found we could do a 360 on the swings,” Claire recalled the Starts At 60 Facebook page. “I got caught by the teacher and it was banned.”
The children simply found other ways to test gravity.
“Thank God our parents didn’t catch us doing that.”
For many Australians who attended school in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, that single sentence probably feels familiar.
Australian schools once operated on a different understanding of childhood. It was a time when children climbed trees, built cubbies, and raced across bitumen playgrounds in summer heat. They rode bicycles to school without helmets and excursions often involved little more than a teacher, common sense and crossed fingers.
In Claire’s case, lessons occasionally extended beyond the school fence.
Teachers took students to the nearby beach and taught them how to swim but today, such a plan would likely require a folder thick enough to stop a door.
Back then, it was simply part of “growing up”.
The memories shared by Starts At 60 readers reveal a school experience many younger Australians would struggle to imagine.
Denise remembers learning on a slate before graduating to paper and pencil.
“Two cuts of the cane on Fridays for failing in maths,” she wrote. “Late 50s.”
Sue recalled writing with a steel nib pen and ink mixed from powder by the class ink monitor. Others remembered shorthand classes, bookkeeping, technical schools and subjects designed to prepare students directly for working life.
Several readers spoke of canes, slippers and blackboard rubbers used as disciplinary tools, while others remembered teachers whose authority was rarely questioned.
Some look back fondly and others, less so.
Uniforms featured heavily in readers’ memories, too. Heather attended Foster High School, where berets, ties and blazers were compulsory.
“We’d turn our berets inside out and wear them like a French chef,” she recalled.
Claire remembers arriving at high school from her small country school and suddenly finding herself in blazers, berets and tunics. Like countless teenage girls before and after her, she and her friends found ways to shorten the regulation skirt.
Some things never change.
It’s tempting to romanticise these stories, but the truth is more complicated.
Many schools were wonderful community hubs, some could be harsh places…. corporal punishment, rigid expectations and limited opportunities were realities for many students.
Yet the memories readers continue to share suggest something enduring: school wasn’t simply where people learned arithmetic or grammar. It was where communities gathered, lifelong friendships formed, it was a place where children learned resilience, confidence, mischief and independence.
Sometimes all at once.
Perhaps that’s why these stories still resonate decades later. Not necessarily because they were better, but because those schoolyards, classrooms and country bus rides helped shape who we became.
What do you remember about school that would surprise Australian children today? A one-teacher classroom? Ink wells? A cane? A tuckshop treat that cost a few cents? Head on over to our Facebook page, we’d love to hear your memories.
This article is part of ‘Lessons That Last’, a new Starts At 60 series exploring the memories, traditions and school experiences that shape Australians across generations, presented in partnership with Schoolblazer Limited, a specialist school uniform company that works with hundreds of schools internationally. Through Lessons That Last, Starts At 60 is exploring the memories and experiences of school life across generations of Australians.