The building at Wayville with its attics and balconies was a quaint and hardly typical school house but it was an appropriate setting for our venture. Beneath the building was a long cellar which we later converted into a rudimentary science laboratory.
It had been difficult to choose teachers for such an uncharted undertaking but by dint of our combined skills and our perseverance we arrived at a reasonable solution to the problem despite our limited experience.
An outbuilding had been converted into a kindergarten and a trained kindergartener had been recommended to us by a psychiatrist friend. Mrs Opperman was a middle-aged German lady who spoke with a clipped accent and had somewhat abrupt mannerisms but she understood young children and their needs very well.
Elizabeth Williams, an art teacher who had shared my concerns about the state education system at the local high school where we had taught, was just the right type of warm, relaxed and creative person to take over our unorthodox art department which comprised the polished floor space of our largest room.
There was an infant mistress who proved in time to be unsuitable and a junior primary teacher, Elizabeth Kenyon, with a definite but kindly personality who was able to adapt reasonably well to the new child handling ethos.
Harry, who was keeping a weather eye on the child development and psychological aspects of the project, became concerned that Burr would not have the appropriate skills with which to run the school and intimated that he could not go on with the venture unless I became Principal. I very earnestly wanted this school to be successful and this was a dilemma for me. Not only were my hopes of a future writing career about to be extinguished but I felt that it would be indelicate to replace Burr at this stage. The compromise had to be made that I should become co-principal with Burr. With backgrounds as diverse as New England ultra-conservative American and radical socialist Australian as well as marked personality differences you have a recipe for confusion in attempting something as complex as co-principals in a school, and a new and different school at that.
Burr would have liked us to proceed with an orderly plan of action when the school finally opened on February 2nd, 1971, but I wanted the minimum of planning and to let things develop in an empirical fashion, step by step. It said a lot for our commitment to the founding of the school that we existed harmoniously with this leadership duality for several weeks. I finally approached Burr and said that I would be happy to pull out if he would like to be Principal. Burr gestured with his hands as if he were warding off something quite dreadful and I bowed to the inevitable and accepted my fate. Burr elected to become the Business manager and also to continue to teach the upper primaries and the woodwork classes. This move was an understandable decision on his part. The period leading up to this resolution had been one of almost chaos. Eighty or so children had come to a school with as yet no identity of its own. The belief of some was that they were now in a "free" school where they could do as they pleased. After the first few days of discovery and bewilderment in the new environment they became more enterprising and ventured out to explore the possibilities for free expression. Those children who had more aggression to unleash ran around in an unruly helter-skelter fashion, indoors and out, and one or two even climbed into the ceiling through a manhole and had to be pursued by Burr.
The staff for the most part were confused about how the term "non-authoritarian" was to be interpreted. and became inhibited about dealing directly with the children. I moved from one crisis situation to another, often shouting to make myself heard over the din and gradually achieved some control as the children began to relate to me.
To begin with there were no compulsory lessons and teachers soon found that they must provide something to interest their charges if they wanted them to stay inside. Many children were enjoying their new found freedom to play almost continuously while others found great satisfaction in being able to paint and draw and make things in the art room. Burr was teaching his class in a room upstairs and after a while they settled down and became more involved with their schoolwork. The lower primary group gradually took shape, with children flitting back and forth to their teacher and in time forming a comfortable relationship with her.
The "fives" as we called the first graders were quite a problem. They continually left their quarters to make "commando" raids on the upper-storey students. I had to resolve this problem by having a fence constructed around their playground to keep them in. The kindergarten under the skilful control of Mrs Opperman functioned without any problem.
Parents had various reactions. A few were influenced by the 60's notions of freedom and the ideas behind the progressive school movement and smiled indulgently upon the pandemonium. Others were anxious about school work and the necessity for keeping children occupied; others again, and probably this was the largest group, felt apprehensive but thought that the school should be given a fair trial. Those anxious about the need to keep children occupied complained to me about child boredom as early as the second day. I tried to explain that it was desirable that children should learn how to occupy themselves rather than always be presented with distractions by adults. To the persistent naggers on this issue, I suggested that they should leave the school if they didn't approve of our methods. This weeding-out process dropped our number by about 10% but we were not unduly concerned. There were also the mothers who had become aware of how different their child handling was compared with the school's. The need for help or feelings of guilt propelled them to my small office at the front of the school and a curtain had to be put up to screen the tearful mums from the rest of the community. With the advent of parent meetings and the child psychology talks given by Harry much of this parent distress was diffused.
Order and control were a necessary condition for the venture at this stage. I relied for the greater part on my intuitive attitudes in the handling of children, but rules needed to be introduced to deal with dangers and hygiene problems. The emphasis was not on aggression as such but on situations in which children might be harmed. So rules were publicly stated, one by one , as the situations developed. The first stone thrown, the first attack with a stick, the first spitting at someone and similar offences in the play ground. Ideally, children should not be required to obey rules simply because they are rules; they need to know the reasons for them and come to understand that they are in their own interest. However, a commonsense solution had to be found for the appropriate and immediate control of children when the situation was warranted.
I introduced the rule that the children had to obey teachers, with the added and clearly stated promise that they could always seek redress if they thought the order unjust or otherwise objected to it. They could come and see me and find out the necessity for the instruction or if there had been a possible mistaken notion behind the teacher's command.
Authority needed to be distinguished from authoritarianism, for both children and staff. Authoritarian handling is rigid, dogmatic and autocratic but authority is the necessary concomitant for the management of any organization although in this situation it had to be benign, caring and always in the child's best interests.
What determined the children's best interests was the philosophy of the school and the child development principles we were committed to follow. The notion of a non- authoritarian, non-punitive school is one that attempts to free children from arbitrary restraint and unnecessary rules in order that they can develop in their own way and at their own pace and also recognizes that punishment and coercion are undesirable and usually very inefficient ways of dealing with the difficulties that beset children.
The basis for discipline in the school had to be found in the notion of self-discipline, community cooperation and a mutually accepted social contract between pupils and the school. Self-discipline in the normal child is achieved by the healthy adjustment of its personality while community discipline is effected by working through the day-to-day social and management problems that occur.
Freedom for the child to develop its own innate potentialities does not mean licence for it to do exactly as it pleases. All children need wise supervision within a framework structured by their developmental needs. The most fundamental developmental need was to put the emotional well-being of children before the introduction of academic or other learning material. Children need to be happy and to be in an environment where their initiative is not destroyed and demands made on them are not unreasonable or beyond their capabilities. In this way the normal child can feel confident to pursue its quest for the skills which are necessary for an adequate mastery over its environment.
Aggressive and destructive responses in the children were the main problems that the teachers faced, as disturbed children will automatically expose their difficulties if given an environment that allows their problems to emerge. Problems appear for the most part as displaced behaviour which has been generated elsewhere by punishment, rejection, neglect or excessive demands on the child. Where this has happened and the child cannot achieve the necessary love and security it requires, it withdraws or rebels and often becomes anti-social or as commonly described "naughty". Teachers can be, like many other people, conditioned to the idea of "naughty" as some off-shoot of original sin. It is often difficult for me to demonstrate that the "naughty "child is more appropriately recognized as an anxious child. Punishment will only make the child more anxious and as a further likely consequence, more "naughty"
Another problem which soon became apparent at Wayville was the special needs of children who had previously been placed in child care while the mother was at work or pursuing University studies. The emotional deprivation of these children became a significant problem to the school as a number of young children required almost constant one-to-one care. It was clear that the availability of our teachers to provide the mothering contact that was needed would make too heavy a demand on them. It was commonplace to see certain teachers going about their duties with a little child clasping them around the neck and this was often at the expense of their other charges. It was a problem that could not continue without the employment of special people to care for these children and that was something we could not afford. The problem had to be solved in the following school year.
Children in the kindergarten and infant school who were anxious about being at school and could not easily separate from their mothers were not to be forcibly separated unless there was a very clear indication that there would be nothing traumatic for the child in such a separation. A parent had to stay with the child until it felt secure enough to remain with the group on its own.
It became apparent that in some cases it was the mother who could not separate from the child. As the child settled down to its school activities, the mother could be heard repeating her farewells, anxiously looking back over her shoulder until the child responded to her emotional appeals. These mothers required help with the "umbilical cord in reverse" situation, and in most cases it was possible to help them to a better understanding of the demands they were actually placing on their children. Quite often it was a mother trying to make a hurried getaway and these mothers had not solved the dependency bond with the child, either. Occasionally the child had managed to establish a hold over the mother and held the upper hand in the relationship. One five year old was a persistent nursery tyrant with his mother. While having a great time playing with his group he would keep a constant look-out in case his mother escaped. After some considerable time I decided that he was quite secure at school and did not need his mother and suggested that she should leave. He retaliated by saying, with a pugnacious stance that if she went he would vomit. I replied very pleasantly that if he wanted to vomit he could go to the bottom of the garden. This simple strategy broke the cycle and he kept a wary but respectful eye on me from then on.
The normal adjustment was for a child to want the mother to stay for a few days until the necessary trust in the teacher took over and he could happily remain at school without her. The child who never felt any qualms about the mother's departure and who would relate easily to any adult was the most disturbed in my opinion and this often occurred with children who had previously been in a child care situation.
There was a notion that our philosophy was based on AS Neill's book on Summerhill, the school he founded in England in 1921. This was not the case as I had not read Neill's book. I had, many years before, read by chance an earlier book of Neill's, "A Dominie in Doubt" published in 1920. When I became committed to the Marbury project I avoided reading any further works on education. Apart from a general disinclination to read at this stage of my life, due I think to my greater involvement in "living", I also wished to develop my own attitudes, practices and theoretical position in the areas of child development and education. That is not to say that I had not had some significant background reading in educational and child development theories which had influenced me. Years before, I had discovered in my father's library the nineteenth-century philosopher Herbert Spencer's "Essays on Education". His doctrine that all instruction in education " should be pleasurable and interesting" and his contention "that no care whatever is taken to fit them (children) for the position of parents" was advice that is still largely unheeded today.
I had made a special study of Anna Freud's "The Psycho-analytic Treatment of Children" and "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence" in my child development reading at Bayswater. I was also influenced by Bertrand Russell's book "On Education" which had been given to me by Elef. I was not able to subscribe to all Russell's educational theory but I was impressed with the action of Russell and his wife Dora in starting Beacon Hill School, a boarding school in Sussex, England in 1927. They broke with traditional educational methods by introducing greater freedom, non-religious teaching and less rigid teaching methods with a greater emphasis on pupil participation in the learning process.
Later I became intrigued with the work of the American Homer Lane, at the Little Commonwealth, a reformatory community in Dorset, England. He had been invited to become Superintendent in 1913, after having made a name for himself working with delinquents at a Detroit boys' home, "The Ford Republic".
At that period the Little Commonwealth, which was founded and supported by a committee of influential people, was made up of some fifty people including thirty-eight boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. These children had been sent there by magistrates or by parents who could not manage their own children. The focus was on self-government with the inmates making their own laws, electing the authority they wanted to obey and becoming themselves the law-enforcers. Lane focussed on the notion of "love" as the cure for these children and he interpreted love as being "on the side of the child" in the child's struggles to overcome its problems. He achieved some impressive results with the children in his care. Further reading made me aware that Lane was probably focussed on unhappy and disturbed adolescents because of his own conflicts and instability. He had a personality that charmed and influenced people very strongly and which often led them to turn a blind eye to his foibles and failings. It is difficult not to describe him as a type of "con man" but he was a complex, many-sided character. He left America under a cloud because of a scandal at the Ford Republic and left England under a much bigger cloud but what he did achieve proved to be a valuable contribution to both education and penology and made a great impression on many people including A.S.Neill
Barbara Bodichon was a much more enduring exemplar for me. She was born Barbara Leigh Smith in 1827, a grand-daughter of William Smith, a strong supporter of Wilberforce during his campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, a daughter of Benjamin Leigh Smith, an enterprising radical Unitarian member of the House of Commons and a cousin of Florence Nightingale. She was a tireless worker for the Rights of Women at a time when the emancipation of women was an extremely unpopular notion. Her campaign for voting rights for women and her part in the foundation of Girton, the first University college for women, were causes in which she involved herself with fervour.
Barbara's first experiment in reform, however, was the starting of the Portman Hall School in London in the early 1850's. She partially financed the project herself, taught some subjects and chose Elizabeth Whitehead, a friend with similar ideas and attitudes as the main teacher. It was co-educational and non-sectarian. It had no punishment and no uniform. Children of all classes and races were taken and its educational methods were far in advance of the time. The school lasted for ten years and finished after both Barbara and Elizabeth had married. Barbara was loath to leave the venture in less capable hands but her work in educational reform was to continue as she firmly believed that a sound education was a necessity if women were to be emancipated.
Gradually order was being established at Wayville. The papers and rubbish which had littered the grounds had been a problem but I saw no value in hounding the children to keep the place tidy. Example is the best teacher and I assiduously and continually picked up the litter myself as I went about the school, making sure that I did not show disapproval of the children in the process. The most subtle form of admonishment for children is moralistic censure. It does not need to be spoken condemnation but the disapproving glance or pious holier-than-thou attitudes which adults often show, either produce a negative response or an attitude of detachment in the child.
This went on for several months until I discovered that an enterprising small boy named Simon had constructed a cart in our woodwork shop and had then set himself up as a rubbish collector. Never again was this a real problem in the school. Simon was unflagging in his pursuit of refuse and the children began to use the rubbish bins around the school themselves.
Small collections of material that could safely be used by children for building cubby houses were brought in and cubby construction became a popular pastime. If we occasionally lost a child in the labyrinth of cubbies it would soon turn up again.
An interest in gardening developed and individual garden plots of flowers and vegetables began to appear divided by pieces of timber each carrying "keep off" notices put there by the young gardeners.
Enormous tractor tyres were scattered about to provide for jumping and leaping activities and the tennis court soon acquired its devotees. The soccer enthusiasts were taken to the nearby parklands at suitable times. A mixed bunch of boys and girls and teachers comprised these soccer teams and soccer became the main school game and has remained so to the present day
My two sons Simon and Timothy and Duncan Dodd had all started at Marbury . Although Simon was now at secondary school level his wish was to be at Marbury and to be able to focus exclusively on art which was his special interest. I felt that a year away from more traditional schooling would be a restorative experience for him and he had a pleasant year painting and drawing and learning to relax again. By 1973 he was eager to return to general class activities.
Simon, Timothy and Duncan were of great assistance when the exhausted teachers and I sat down in the school kitchen for our lunch break. There were no regulations about teacher supervision in those days and the boys acted as caretakers of the children outside, bringing to me any of those too difficult for them to manage. Needless to say, I always ate my lunch with one or two of the most mischievous on my knees.
"What happens if you are naughty?" said the Channel Two film director making a TV segment, to two little boys playing in a sandpit. "Nothing," said one, "they take you into the kitchen and tickle you." This somewhat peculiar remark referred to the control I had to exercise over my desire to smack some infuriating child (an absolutely outre response) and to displace the taboo urge with a tickle in the ribs.
The school's opening had received some attention from the media. There were several articles with pictures of our "free" children in the press and a Channel Two documentary was made about the school.
We had a brief mention in "The Australian" prior to starting while at the same time there was considerable publicity for the Educational Reform Association school, ERA which was to be established at Donvale in Victoria. The education writer for "The Australian", Henry Schoenheimer was on the Board of ERA but despite our inauspicious beginning Marbury long outlasted ERA.
There was, however, very little interest from the local educational fraternity. Towards the end of the year we were lent a film on "Summerhill". We had invited our parents to come one evening and see this film but to our surprise a horde of uninvited academics and teachers' college lecturers descended upon us. I found these interlopers also doing some exploratory wandering through our classrooms and suggested that if they were interested in the school they could come back at some more appropriate time. We invited them to stay for the film but there were no requests for future visits to the school!
The fame of "Summerhill" was no doubt a lure and a small school in a relatively obscure city like Adelaide could have no pretensions to any distinction at its inception but the situation hardly changed as the years went by.
There were a few problems in maintaining suitable staff. A teacher who had been at Preshil for many years applied for a position with us. I assumed she would be very suitable and put her in charge of the formal learning of the upper primaries but when she smacked one of our pupils I had to dispense with her services . A former Catholic brother who had given up religion was taken on but he had something wrong with his back and his remedy for this was to hang by the hands and feet from trees in the playground. This eccentric practice, along with his often unsuitable reactions to the children left me with no option but to dismiss him. Our first infant mistress took a group of her students into the nearby parklands and when one of her charges was injured, in her panic, she commandeered a passing car and took the child to hospital leaving the rest of the group in the park with another lady. A very risky situation and after my admonishment she became offended and left.
The new infant mistress, Mrs Armit, was recommended by an Education Department inspector and proved to be suitable once she had adapted herself to the different educational requirements of the school. On her first day I took her into the classroom and introduced her to her new pupils. I came back later to see how she was faring and found her standing in the classroom in a bewildered state. "They have all gone," she said in dismay.
"Well you will have to entice them to come back," I said blithely, "if you want them inside with you."
I wanted teachers to learn to use their initiative and not have to fall back on a school blue-print for management of difficulties they might encounter as they had been previously conditioned to do. I would demonstrate procedures they might follow if things got out of hand. I would gather up a bunch of unruly children who were harassing their teacher and get them involved in a "follow-the-leader" game with me. Skip, go slowly, go fast, hands on heads, touch your toes, etc; through the school grounds, outside on the footpath, down to the next street, around the block the "Pied Piper" would go with a stream of children following. I don't know what the residents thought but I did achieve my aim with relaxed children having a more positive attitude to the school. Teachers themselves gradually learnt to resolve problems by being more flexible.
At the beginning of each week we had a school meeting with everyone present. It was a time for students and teachers alike to be able to talk about any issue that concerned them. To introduce an element of fun we sang what was to become our early school song, "What shall we do with a drunken sailor?" and I would do a jig to the music to the delight of the assembled children. It was so important to break down the barriers and the formality of teacher-child relationships. For this reason, first names of teachers were used from the beginning of the school.
To introduce a new thematic approach to learning and heighten the more pleasurable aspects of school life Burr and I introduced pageants which were held from time to time. A particular theme such as Captain Cook or Red Indians would be set and all the activities in the school would revolve around the coming production. Many of the lessons in History, English, Art, Craft, Arithmetic and Woodwork would be centred around the theme. Captain Cook's "Endeavour", Red Indian wigwams and such like were constructed in the grounds. Parents were invited to the pageants. Burr and I would appear in some sort of fancy costume and there would be afternoon tea for the parents and cordial for the children, It was all very jolly.
A calm had begun to settle on the school yard. The slightly hysterical tempo was disappearing and children were settling into their special routines. I introduced a story reading session as a rest time for each class after the lunch time break. They could sit or lie on the floor reading to themselves or listening to the teacher's story and primary children at Marbury still follow this pattern.
Harry and I had sold our house at Stirling to be near the school. Harry had moved into private child psychiatric practice and in order to provide medical rooms and living quarters in an appropriate locality we bought a former Church of Christ chapel in North Adelaide. It was a late 19th century beautifully constructed small stone building with Gothic arched chapel windows. Plans were drawn up to convert the building into three floors with the use of old telegraph poles to support the flooring of the two upper storeys. My mother, who was becoming rather confused at that time, told my family in Melbourne that Margaret had bought a cathedral!
For the time being, while the building was going ahead, we had moved into some of the empty upstairs rooms at the school.
As the year progressed the strain began to tell on me. With the winter months, infections in the school increased and the close contact with young children heightened the risk of contagion for adults. It was also cold and uncomfortable living in the draughty old building without the solace of the usual middle-class comforts. The constant raising of my voice in dealing with miscreants had made me vulnerable to laryngitis and this in turn was a stressful situation for me as I sought to maintain my control of what was still a demanding and exhausting undertaking.
I held on into the Spring with the latest cold turning to bronchitis and my movements around the school being heralded by a barking cough. Finally Harry's medical scruples overcame my dogged resistance to any treatment which might take me out of the school and he packed me off to bed. My relegation to the upstairs living quarters was a tantalizing experience. All sorts of things seemed to be going wrong in the playground and I was unable to intervene. For an assertive manager like me this was problematic apart from the fact that I felt very ill. Finally Harry moved me to a private hospital where an X-ray showed that I was suffering from pneumonia.
The hospital was on South Terrace just across the parklands from the school and as soon as I was relatively comfortably ensconced in my private room, teachers started to come over, one by one, with their difficulties. I had no objection to these visits as I was equally concerned about the school problems, but what was more distressing for me were the cries of children in the child care centre next door which wafted up to me throughout the day. Misery, that I was quite powerless to alleviate.
It was near the end of the school year by this time and I made a pact with my doctor to be able to leave hospital and return for the final week of school if I did not work myself. I think I was probably intent on deceiving him in any case as I was soon involved in school affairs which hindered my convalescence.
On the last school day when the children and teachers had departed Joyce and I were waiting for a parent enrolment interview, when I tripped and cut my head on a door jamb. The local doctor who sewed up the gash with sixteen stitches surveyed his bloodied surgery and ruefully remarked that it was more like a traffic accident.
So ended the first year of Marbury, overall successful, if somewhat uncomfortable in spots.