Children and Schooling in New South Wales, 1860-1920

In the second half of the nineteenth century in New South Wales the introduction and spread of mass schooling added a significant workload to the lives of most children. The ideal of modern schooling placed children in a classroom, morning and afternoon, five days a week, for most weeks of the year. In effect the schoolroom became a kind of workplace, albeit unpaid. Schoolwork became a given for nearly all children, whatever their household's societal position. Socio-economic status, race and gender affected and mediated a child's experience of schooling, but they did not remove children from the school experience. The school system functioned to reproduce and impart values considered important by the respectable and powerful in society. The mass schooling program established remains in place today. Consolidated and extended, it nevertheless retains and continues many original values and functions, and still prescribes experience and containment for children.