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Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 180–189

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God’s antipodean teaching force: An historical exposition onCatholic teaching religious in Australia

Tom O’Donoghue�, Stephanie Burley

Graduate School of Education, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia

Received 30 August 2006; received in revised form 17 October 2006; accepted 30 October 2006

Abstract

From the 1850s to the 1970s the teaching force in Catholic schools in Australia was dominated by priests, female

religious and brothers. This paper details the scope of existing research on these teachers, the demands of their religious

vocation, their own education, the atmosphere which they established in the schools, leadership opportunities, and the

‘darker side’ of their way of life. Such expositions can promote reflection on the possibility that teaching can be influenced

by discourses of ‘vocation’ and ‘the giving of service’, every bit as much as it can be by ‘industrial’ and ‘labour’

perspectives.

r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Catholic; Teachers; Australia; History; Religion; Abuse

1. Introduction

Teaching was not an intermediary step betweentheir own education and marriage; it was a life-long commitment. Teaching was not a means ofgaining economic stability or advantage; it was acommitment to a life in community where thecommunity not the individual gained the finan-cial remuneration. Teaching, was not a job; itwas a vocation—a call to serve God (Smyth,1994, p. 27).

In Australia thousands of religiously professedCatholic men and women have, over nearly twocenturies, constructed their professional lives as

ee front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

te.2006.10.011

ing author. Tel.: +61 8 6488 3822;

1056.

ess: Tom.O’Donoghue@uwa.edu.au

e).

integral to their religious vocation (Fitzwalter, 1977;Fogarty, 1959, p. 208). As described in the openingquotation, the notion of vocation embodies aspiritual belief in being called by God, to work for

God in a religious community, taking vows ofpoverty, chastity and obedience. For many priests,religious brothers and female religious (the reli-gious) in Australia the work in question wasteaching. This reflected the situation throughoutthe English-speaking Catholic world where theteaching religious dominated Catholic schools.The turning point was the mid 1960s and theopening up of the Catholic Church (the Church) tothe modern world as a result of the Second VaticanCouncil (1962–1965). This opening up resulted in‘‘large numbers leaving the religious orders, a majordrop off in new recruits and a consequent needto employ ever greater numbers of lay teachers’’(O’Donoghue, 2004a, b, p. 11).

.

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Historical expositions on the teaching religious inCatholic schools have the potential to be instructivefor those interested in alternative perspectives onthe teaching profession. In particular, such exposi-tions can be seen as constituting models aimed atpromoting reflection on the possibility that teachingcan be influenced by discourses of ‘vocation’ and‘the giving of service’, every bit as much as it can beby ‘industrial’ and ‘labour’ perspectives. This paperon the teaching religious in Australia is offered asone contribution to alerting readers to one set ofsuch possibilities. The hope also is that it willstimulate interest in developing a much moresubstantial exposition on the lives of Catholicteaching religious throughout the English-speakingworld as a whole.

The paper is in six parts: the scope of existingresearch on the teaching religious in Australia, thedemands of the religious vocation, the education ofthe religious teacher, the atmosphere established byreligious teachers in their schools, leadership op-portunities for religious teachers, and the ‘darkerside’ of religious life. Throughout the paper theemphasis is significantly greater on female religiousthan on their male counterparts. This is because atall times the female religious greatly outnumberedmale religious in the schools.

2. The scope of existing research on the teaching

religious in Australia

In Australia by 1950, there were 44 religiousorders in the country involved in teaching: 27 offemale religious, 8 of religious brothers and 9 ofpriests (O’Donoghue, 2001, pp. 22–27). In the earlydecades of the nineteenth century the orders werebrought into the country so that a system ofeducation could be run for the minority Catholicpopulation at minimum expense. Over the years,however, their presence came to be legitimatedby the Church on other grounds. Fogarty (1959,p. 208) summarised as follows the general viewwhich came to be articulated:

Given the non-Catholic environment of Australiaand the consequent greater need for a positivelyCatholic environment in the Catholic school, thebishops had consistently preferred religious. Theselection of religious in the first place, then theiryears of preparation and regular periods for therenewal of the spirit, conferred on them, it wasgenerally believed, a special stamp.

Largely, the argument was that the ‘religiouspersonality’ of the teacher who was a member of areligious order rendered him or her ideally suited forshaping young Catholic minds. What was beingreferred to here, of course, was not the religiousteacher’s ‘natural’ personality but, rather, thepersonality which was formed through a period ofspecial religious training, of which teacher trainingwas an integral part.

Of late a body of literature has begun to emergeon the lives of such teachers in Australia. In 2001,O’Donoghue (2001) produced a text responding tothe central question posed in 1993 by Musgrave(1993) regarding the unique characteristics ofCatholic schooling in Australia. The sets of issuesposed by O’Donoghue focus on what was distinctiveabout those who taught, what they taught, and howthey taught it. In a more recent text (O’Donoghue,2004a) he has examined the recruitment, retentionand contribution of religious orders, male andfemale, to Catholic education not only in Australia,but also in the United States, England, Wales,Ireland and New Zealand from 1925 to 1965. Thus,a comprehensive and broad examination of thetopic exists.

In the main, however, the focus of morespecialised research on religious teachers has beenon female religious, even though a beginning hasbeen made on the study of the male religious withthe emergence of a few excellent studies recently(Hamilton, 2000; Scott, 2000). In 1986, Kyle (1986)examined Catholic girls’ secondary schoolingand the role of religious females in teaching.Prentice and Theobald (1991, p. 23) in their workon Australian female teachers also alerted historiansto the potential for research on female religiousteachers. In the same year McGrath (1991) tracedthe educational traditions of three female religiousorders which came to Australia and establishedschools for girls, namely, the Ursuline Order, theLoreto Sisters and the Sacred Heart Sisters. Otheraspects highlighted were the professional prepara-tion of the religious teacher and the encouragementof higher education of women. The orders inquestion educated many of the women who wereto enter such later-established teaching orders inAustralia as the Presentation Sisters, the Sisters ofCharity and the Sisters of Mercy. Burley (1992,1997, 1999a, 1999b, 2000) responded by focusing onthe leadership of female religious teachers inAustralia, on the institutions they established anddeveloped, and on the contradictions that their lives

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posed for themselves, the Catholic male clericalHierarchy and their students.

3. The ‘religious vocation’

Overall, the body of research on male and femalereligious in Australia reveals a picture of their livesand of how they differed from lay teachers in bothgovernment and non-government schools. Theessence of the difference can be deduced from aconsideration of the demands of their ‘vocation’.Male and female religious teachers were individualscommitted to a way of life built around prayer andengaging in ‘good works’ (Peckham-Magray, 1998,pp. 5–11). If one analyses the situation from an‘outsider’ perspective it is problematised by arealisation that these individuals were not born intothe world pre-destined for their future roles. Rather,a powerful set of influences operated on them overtheir life-span to construct them as individualswho came to think and act in the habitual waysassociated with being a teacher who was also amember of a religious order. Catholic schoolingplayed a major role in this process, being permeatedby sets of ideas and practices which served thedual function of facilitating the recruitment ofnew members and safeguarding those who hadalready responded to what was portrayed as aspecial ‘call’ from God (O’Donoghue & Potts, 2004,pp. 469–472). Families, parish priests and bishopsalso encouraged the notion of vocation amongst‘the faithful’, putting life as a priest, brother orfemale religious on a pedestal and signifying thatthis was the ultimate goal to which young Catholicsshould aspire.

By the latter half of the nineteenth century thefemale religious, religious brothers and priests whostaffed a growing number of Catholic schoolsthroughout Australia were clearly seen as beingdifferent in significant ways from lay teachers. Suchdifferences were displayed not only in the uniquetype of dress of the religious and their commitmentto the teaching of religion, but also in the range ofwork practices in which they engaged. Members ofreligious orders were expected to commit themselvestotally to their work by taking on without anypayment many more duties than would be con-sidered reasonable for a state school teacher, or fora lay teacher in a Catholic school (O’Donoghue &Potts, 2004, pp. 469–472). These duties includedcleaning the school, taking care of the surroundings,training various teams for competitions in sport,

giving extra tuition to ‘slow-learners’, conductingthe work of the various religious ‘sodalities’ forpupils and adults, organising school concerts,engaging in a variety of fund-raising activities, andpreparing pupils for the Sacraments of Confession,Communion and Confirmation. Where schoolscatered for boarders it was often the classroomteacher who also supervised them after school hoursand at weekends. Further, it was common (particu-larly in the case of female religious teaching thepoorer sections of society) for them to offer musiclessons and speech lessons after school hours, oftento Catholics and non-Catholics alike, to supplementthe income which the particular communitiesderived from low school fees.

The expansion of this work by the religiousteaching orders was possible because they had beensuccessful not only in reproducing their ownmembership, but in multiplying it. This did nottake place by accident. The Catholic population wasregularly reminded from the pulpit and in theCatholic press that these were individuals who haddevoted themselves completely to the religious wayof life as priests, brothers or sisters (Kennedy, 1985,p. xv). The standard message sent out was thatthey had foregone the pleasures of the world inorder to concentrate on prayer and on improvingthe lot of others through engaging unselfishly insuch noble activities as teaching, nursing andsocial work. It was also quite common for teacherswho were members of religious orders to speak topupils in class about the lives of fellow religious as aheroic sacrifice. Their work was represented asbeing extraordinarily difficult, yet borne with acheerful spirit because it brought them closer thanlay people to God. Passages in the ‘rules’ and‘constitutions’ of religious orders were also calledupon by members from time to time for neatsummaries expressing the ends of what was referredto as the ‘noble calling’ of those in religious life(O’Donoghue, 2004a, p. 68). By engaging in thesepractices the religious were not only enticing thosein their charge to join their ranks, but were alsoregularly confirming within themselves that theirown choice of life-style was indeed the most nobleone, a true vocation.

4. The education of the religious teacher

The training of the religious teacher was differentfrom that of the secular teacher. The training offemale religious, religious brothers and priests who

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were members of religious orders often commencedwith entry to a ‘juniorate’ at 14 years of age. Insome ways juniorates were not very different fromordinary Catholic boarding schools, althoughusually the teachers were specially selected bothfor what was seen as their excellent teaching abilitiesand for their own fervent commitment to thereligious way of life and to the religious order towhich they belonged (Geraghty, 2001; Redrup,1997). There was also a somewhat greater emphasison discipline and on saturating all aspects of lifewith a religious ethos. In the juniorate, both boysand girls got some introduction to the history andtraditions of the religious orders with which theywere associated. Also, while they did not engage inteaching practice, their minds were regularly or-iented towards the notion of teaching as a vocationand as ‘a calling from God’.

Some of those who graduated from the juniorateslinked with both ‘ordinary’ school leavers and thosewho had been working for a number of years, toenter the first stage of formally joining a religiousorder by becoming a ‘postulant’. They lived with‘novices’, who had progressed to the next stage andthey came under all the novitiate rules. In the case offemale religious who were postulants, they partookin a religious ceremony on their first day at whichthey received a distinctive dress and neat veil. Insome religious orders they then underwent a crashcourse in very basic primary school teacher trainingfor 4–6 weeks, including lectures on how to teachmathematics, reading and spelling (Collins, 2001,p. 143). This was followed by about 2 months invarious schools working with teachers in the class-room. Each novice was then sent out to one of anumber of regional convents for 12 months and putin charge of a primary school class, with the teacherin the next classroom acting as a monitor. Thenovice prepared all of her own lessons, but everyevening and weekend the monitor would checkwhat she had done and how she had marked thechildren’s books.

During this period the postulant learned to liveaccording to the rhythms of the community(O’Donoghue, 2004a, p. 83). Normally she rose at5:30 am for Mass, followed by breakfast in thecommunity dining hall, before heading off to schoolwith some of the female religious. Here she taughtuntil about 3:30 pm. The next task was to clean upthe classroom, sweep the floorboards, often with thehelp of the children, and set up the chalkboard forthe next day. She then had to return to the convent

for community prayers at 5.00 pm, followed by tea.After tea she sat down for what was officially‘recreation’, but which was usually a time whenthose who were teaching marked pupils’ work andprepared some lessons for the following day. Thiswas also a time for sharing pedagogical ideas, withthe more experienced female religious not onlyadvising each other on what they found to beeffective teaching methods, but also inducting thepostulants into the practice of seeking their advice.This community sharing of pedagogical ideas wasalso a feature of the evening period set aside by TheChristian Brothers (1927, p. 294) for the prepara-tion of the lessons for the following day. Thereligious and teaching discourses were intricatelyrelated.

Those who continued on beyond the postulancybecame novices. The novitiate usually lasted 2years, although this varied somewhat from onereligious order to the next. The first year, called the‘canonical year’, aimed at promoting a deeperspiritual awareness in the novices. During this yearthere was no mention of teaching, apart fromreading the lives of well-known former membersand of their work for God through the educationalroles which they fulfilled. The second year, however,was very much a teacher training year. In the case ofmost orders, this meant primary teacher training,even for those who, at a later stage, went on to teachin secondary schools. By the 1920s all of the malereligious orders involved in education in Australiahad either established their own teacher trainingcollege, sent their members to one run by anotherorder, or sent them to a state-run college or auniversity education department. Many of thefemale orders in the most populous states alsohad their own colleges, while in Queensland andWestern Australia teacher training continued to beprovided on the earlier apprenticeship model, withsome theory being imparted in classes within theconvent by sisters who had done some study in thediscipline of education at university (MacGinley,1996, p. 280). It has also been pointed out that bythe mid-1930s most of those female religious orderswhich judged university education to be geographi-cally feasible ensured that at least several promisingteachers availed themselves of it MacGinley (1996,p. 281). Throughout this teacher-training year thetheological and spiritual training of the novicescontinued, especially on weekends, highlighting thedominance and integration of all in the religiousdiscourse of ‘the vocation’.

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5. The atmosphere established by religious teachers

in their schools

Once in schools religious teachers established verydifferent atmospheres from their secular counter-parts in that they ensured that the learningenvironments, both in the formal curriculum andextra curricular activities, were permeated byreligion and religious practices. Such an atmospherewas particularly influential in the lives of pupils whowere boarders. These students were immersed in thereligious ethos of the classrooms and in additionhad to comply with the regimented routines of thecommunity’s life. Accordingly, these boarders wereoften influenced not only by their classroomteachers, but also by the religious in charge of theboarders and by the pervasive presence of all othersin the nearby community house or convent.

The daily routine of boarders has been describedas follows:

ycompulsory morning prayers, daily Mass,rosary in the chapel after tea, night prayerstogether followed by an introduction to medita-tion. Breakfast was taken in silence so that arecollection of Mass could be maintained. Manyother spiritual exercises filled the day (Burley,2001, p. 33).

In addition, for both boarders and day students inthese schools, their teachers focussed on seasonaland annual celebrations such as May devotions to‘Our Lady, the Mother of God’ by reciting daily theholy rosary in front of her statue. In June the schoolassembled at the altar in front of a large picture ofthe ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ with scarlet satin drapes,lace, red flowers and candles. Other ‘holy days’ andcommunity members’ ‘patronal feast days’ were allfully explained and celebrated. In addition to thesereligious rituals permeating the daily lives of pupils,religion permeated all subjects in addition to theformal Christian Doctrine lessons.

Students’ reminiscences refer regularly to aural,visual and olfactory recollections entwined intheir religious experiences. Aural aspects includebells, hymns and music, both choral and instru-mental. Visual perceptions, including theatricalrituals with their incumbent architectural setting,icons and costumes (priests’ vestments and theflowing habits of female religious, students’ whitesuits and communion dresses and veils), all leftvaried impressions on young students. The orches-

tration of such experiences was understood to bepart of all that was meant to be a teaching religious.

Teaching religious also had religious ambitionsfor themselves and their students. Hamilton (2000,p. 173), in her study of Christian Brothers’ CollegeAdelaide between 1879 and 1912, elaborates on theattempts by the Christian Brothers to raise thestatus of students and indicates that the ‘‘masculi-nities appropriate for the middle class and theprofessions were encouraged’’. She also indicatesthat the Order brought its own religious principlesand firmly established practices. The aim, sheargues, ‘‘was to live within the spirit of the Order’scharism, thus being inspired to strengthen theChurch by empowering Catholic boys with spiritualand worldly education, and the Order by encoura-ging novitiates’’ (Hamilton, 2000, p. 173). Hamiltonelaborates as follows:

The teacher-centred classroom of the ChristianBrothers was a model of the patriarchal organi-sation of the school, the order and the Church.The teaching of religion set the pattern for othersubjects. Religious truths were treated as receivedwisdom and were to be unquestionedy.Themethodology of drill and strict timetables neces-sitated unquestioning acceptance by student-syThis process of unquestioning acceptancecould perhaps better be described as infantilisa-tion rather than feminisationystudents weredeprived of free will and adulthood to makethem more unquestioning. ysubmission to dis-cipline was an important sub text of the school.In another of the school’s paradoxes, while it washoped that the students would become leaders,they were at school expected to be submissivefollowers (Hamilton, 2000, p. 166).

In examining the favoured masculinities atChristian Brothers College and whether theydiffered from the hegemonic ones, Hamilton con-cluded that being Irish Catholics, the Brothersencouraged a masculinity which differed from thehegemonic Anglo-Saxon one in important ways; ‘itwas aggressive and passive, militant and sentimen-tal, public and private’ (Hamilton, 2000, p. 166).Thus, she concluded, religion intersecting with class,race and gender can be a significant element in thegender formation of school students. Indeed,regarding the latter, certain feminisation processeswere in operation in the education of Catholic boysthroughout Australia which were aimed at develop-ing their emotional commitment to family life;

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processes which had few parallels outside theCatholic tradition. Christ, St. Paul and the medievalknight were often given as models of men whocombined strength with gentleness and sensitivity,while the lives of the female saints were studied.Furthermore, the Jesuits in particular tried tobalance the emphasis on sport by encouragingmusic and drama, and this when the performingarts were tending to become the preserve of femalesin many other schools in the English-speakingworld.

The constant urging that boys consider whetherthey had a religious vocation was also significant asthis meant that the ‘caring’ professions, andparticularly teaching, were regularly eulogised forthem at a time when such professions were comingto be seen as women’s work by the rest of society.The dominant feminine image put before Catholicboys was that of the Virgin Mary, symbol of atraditional concept of appropriate womanhood.Mothers and Mary were idealised for their ‘gentlesway’ in matters domestic. Notions of the virtues ofpurity and modesty were regularly promoted, whilethe ‘evils of divorce’’ were highlighted. All of thisserved to reinforce the Church’s emphasis on theneed to bolster the family unit and take control of it,so that, in turn, control could be maintained overthe minds of the ‘faithful’.

Catholic female teaching religious also deliber-ately set out to encourage pupils to follow in theirfootsteps and they replicated within the schoolclassrooms the authoritarianism of their ownreligious life. Up until about 1965 they, along withtheir male counterparts, worked continuously tomarginalise lay teachers from decision-making andthey were ever vigilant in their opposition to co-education and sex education in their schools(O’Donoghue, 2004b). Through the use of asso-ciated practices the Catholic teaching orders weresuccessful in using the schools as a major instrumentnot only for the reproduction of their membership,but also for its expansion.

6. Leadership opportunities for religious teachers

Once educated for Australian Catholic class-rooms, several opportunities for holding positionsof leadership within the schools became availablefor the teaching religious. Indeed, a number ofprofessional responsibilities were clearly demar-cated in the orders’ constitutions. Avenues for thedevelopment of initiative, responsibility and deci-

sion making were available because of the necessityfor religious headmasters and headmistresses tobecome involved in business concerns There isevidence of religious principals’ involvement in suchmajor economic decisions as purchasing and build-ing properties, and investing in the share market(Burley, 1997). Also, the democratic system ofelections within the orders and the establishmentof regional administrative councils, ensured thatseveral leadership positions were available and thatthey were rotated.

An apparent contradiction must be highlighted.While it may appear that there was room for self-determination amongst the teaching religious, therewas also the necessity to fulfil the vow of obedience.So, whilst opportunities for independence ofthought and action existed for many, they werealso required to submit and obey communitydirectives (Collins, 2001, p. 197). In addition tofulfilling the vow of obedience, religious teachershad to contend with canonical and constitutionalstrictures on their daily lives, instructions from their‘superior-generals’ and local bishops’ attempts atinterference. Also, leadership roles were onlyapplicable to the middle-class educated femalereligious or brothers who were usually trained asteachers or nurses. They were able to embark onboth their spiritual and professional lives unhin-dered in the main by domestic responsibilitiesbecause their counterparts of more lowly socialorigins—the lay sister and domestic brother—did allof the cooking, cleaning and domestic work(Trimingham-Jack, 2003, pp. 107–109).

The manner in which class divisions within thewider society were replicated within the cloister canbe more fully appreciated by considering thedivision in many orders of female religious betweenwhat were termed the ‘choir’ sisters and the laysisters. A lay sister was defined as a member of areligious order who was not bound to the recitationof the Divine Office and was occupied in manualwork (O’Donoghue, 2004a, p. 25). The separationoriginally arose in relation to males in Westernmonasticism in the Middle Ages when a distinctionwas made between the oblati, who had been placedin the monastery by their parents, and the conversiwho entered later in life. Originally both groupswere considered to be equal but, as the abbeysbecame centres of learning, those who lacked thetraining of the oblati, who were illiterate, orwere uneducated, came to be referred to as con-versus. This development laid the foundation for the

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emergence of the same divisions within many ofthe more recently established female religiousorders, including those which spread throughoutthe English-speaking world in the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries (Peckham-Magray, 1998; Walsh,2002). Here the lay sisters carried out the domesticwork in the convents, particularly cooking andcleaning, so that choir sisters could be free to praythe Divine Office, engage in intellectual pursuits anddo the apostolic work of the congregation, whichwas usually either teaching or nursing.

Regarding all teaching religious, the emergence oforal histories also demonstrates that the cloisterwas not always a place where divisions of powerand authority were accepted without resistance,even if that resistance was hidden from public view.Also, while ‘religious formation’ was meant tosubdue the personalities of members so that theywould adopt angelic-like characteristics, manymanaged to maintain their idiosyncrasies and findspaces for displaying their interests. Plowman’s(2003) work on a Catholic farm school, St. Mary’sTardun, in Western Australia, is very instructive inthis regard; he managed to gain free access tointernal reports that portray clearly the tensionswhich existed within a community of ChristianBrothers in the 1930s and 1940s. In similar vein,Trimingham-Jack (2003, pp. 84–92) relates theexperience of one member of a community offemale religious in New South Wales who managedto pursue child-centred approaches to teachingdespite disapproval by superiors, and that ofanother member who managed to identify with thechildren at a level beyond what was consideredappropriate.

A further set of debates focussing particularly onwomen teachers has relevance to the female teach-ing religious. Strober and Tyack (1980, pp. 494–503)have suggested that in the history of education itwould seem that ‘‘women teach and men manage’’.On this, Acker (1983, pp. 123–141) also argued thatit is reasonable to speak of a sexual division oflabour in teaching. These notions, however, must bequalified when the history of female teachingreligious is considered. The latter did not have tocontend with the tension that the demands ofdomesticity involved. The sisters had their owndivision of labour within the convent, with laysisters undertaking the majority of domestic tasks.This practice ensured that teaching sisters, princi-pals and convent leaders were, in the main, free toaddress their professional responsibilities. In Aus-

tralian convent schools these females were notunder-represented, they were sole administrators.

7. The darker side

The formal discourse of Catholic education hasalways stressed vocation, idealism, consensus,service and unity and it has either avoided orrepressed the recognition of internal strugglesand conflicts as unedifying and as potentiallydisturbing to the faithful (Grace, 2002, p. 26).

The belief that developed within the CatholicChurch over centuries was that it was only throughloyalty and obedience that the Church could remainstrong. Equally, the view was that nothing shouldever get mentioned in public that might harm theChurch; the Church must be protected at all costs.This situation, however, has changed over the last10 years in particular, when the Catholic Churchhas been shaken time and time-again by a wholeseries of scandals pertaining to child abuse, bothphysical and sexual, which was carried out inschools and other educational institutions run bythe religious orders throughout the English-speak-ing world, including in Australia.

The great majority of the abuse reported relatesto the twentieth century and there is no shortage ofaccounts of what took place (Coldrey, 1991). Why itoccurred is now also being addressed. The programof ‘spiritual formation’ for female religious, reli-gious brothers and priests often resulted in a varietyof practices being adopted by teaching religiouswithin the schools which were certainly not inaccordance with any official pedagogical position ofthe religious orders to which the members inquestion belonged. The humiliation to which somefemale pupils were subjected by female religious, inthe presence of their peers, can be seen as mirroringthe experience which those same teachers had at thehands of the Mistress of Novices, the particularfemale religious responsible for their spiritualdevelopment within the convent. There was neverany intention that teachers should apply to theirpupils the rules aimed at developing humility in thereligious. Nevertheless, some did. This situation canbe attributed either to a failure on the part of theteachers to distinguish between their own ‘spiritualformation’ as members of a religious order andwhat was appropriate in the classroom, or toinflicting on pupils the frustration and humiliationwhich they themselves experienced within thecloister. In addition, the classrooms of Catholic

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schools were often very stressful places because ofvery large class sizes; places, one is inclined to say,where crowd control techniques were required.Many turned to corporal punishment, the onlyapproach to discipline they knew, while also beingaware that they were engaging in a practice whichwas legally and socially sanctioned.

It is also important to consider that many whobecame teachers in religious teaching orders wereoften recruited in their teens. This was probably asignificant factor in the aggressive dispositionadopted by some. What is being suggested hereis that the ‘normal’ turmoil of early to-middleadolescent years is unsettling enough psychologi-cally, without having to subdue desires and passionsin order to be able to live within the extraordinaryauthoritarian framework of the consecrated celibatelife (O’Donoghue, 2003, pp. 1–15). The associatedrepression for some became manifest in variousways, one of which was in a very high level ofphysical punishment of pupils.

Beginning in the 1930s there was a great increasein the demands made of teachers in Catholic schoolsin Australia as the school leaving age rose.Concurrently, the promotion of government policyof ‘education for all’ led to the expectation of asimilar commitment from the non-governmenteducational sector. The 1940s witnessed a trend toearlier marriage, to an increasing proportion ofwomen marrying, and to an increase in migration.A consequence in the early 1950s was that allschools struggled to meet the challenge of a rapidlygrowing school population. The response of over-worked teachers in Catholic schools with largerclasses was rigid control and routine discipline. Nowalso these teachers encountered large numbers ofchildren whose first language was not Englishbecause of the government’s migration policy whichattracted Southern Europeans, many of whom wereCatholics.

Overall, the religious training of the teachingreligious prepared them poorly for such develop-ments. The rules which governed their liveswere designed originally for enclosed orders whowere deliberately cut off from the world in theirmonasteries and abbeys so that they could devotethemselves totally to prayer and the contemplationof the Divine. The notion was that this prayer andcontemplation could lead to the death of one’spersonality so that one could be reconstituted in thislife to approximate the asexual state which one ismeant to have in heaven, thus increasing the

possibility of getting there. The problem formembers of religious orders involved in teaching,however, was that they were meant to cut them-selves off from the world of interpersonal relation-ships, while at the same time they were meant to beinvolved in the education of children.

Related dilemmas also presented themselves.Graham (1992, p. 42), for example, has commentedas follows on her period as a novice:

It was not long before I began to feel thecontradictions inherent in the life of a nun—wewere to live a life of love, of God first and aboveall else, and then of love for all those we workedwith. Love to me implied warmth, spontaneityand generosity, but these qualities were oftensuppressed. For our training involved ‘deathto self’—a disciplined self-control of all suchfeelings [y]. For me, love and death to selfpresented a dichotomy that could never bereconciled’.

Trimingham-Jack (2003) also highlights some of thecontradictions in the lives of female religiousteachers. Again using oral history extensively, shepresents several comparisons, including that be-tween the written and the oral, the rhetoric and thereality, idealism and practice, love and freedom,English/British culture and the Australian colonialinfluence, the male/sublime (the Sacred Heart) andthe female/beautiful (Mary), and finally the conflictposed by the desire to make Kerever Park (theboarding school under discussion) a happy homeand school, and the desire to adhere to theauthoritarian demands of the religious community.Contradictions and tensions like this constitute anarea worthy of much more investigation, especiallyinto the possibility that such paradoxes led to afrustration amongst many which was relieved bylashing out in various ways at those in their care.Indeed, it may well be that this line of researchcould turn much of the current focus of attention onits head and result in the posing of such as-yetunasked questions as how it was that so many ofthose who joined religious teaching orders managedto maintain a humanity, a gentleness and a sharpintellect, given what they experienced in the cloister.

8. Conclusion

Overall, this paper on the teaching religious inCatholic schools in Australia has portrayed ateaching force which was, in the main hidden, from

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the public, had minimal contact with familymembers, and often wore ‘the habit’, or uniformclothing, to epitomise the denial of self and ensureanonymity. In the 1960s, however, they werereleased from many of these traditional restrictions,and emerged from the private into the public world.The process received a definite impetus from thepronouncements of the Second Vatican Council(1962–1965) and the encouragement of ‘‘adaptationof religious life structures based on completelyrevised constitutions’’ (MacGinley, 1996, p. 323).Change too was apparent in the management oflarge Catholic schools in Australia, where religiousprincipals had to contend with financial constraints,staffing problems, and a dramatic increase instudent numbers. In addition to local schoolpressures, leaders and classroom teachers had tokeep abreast of educational and religious develop-ments and political debates to ensure that studentsbenefited from these developments.

Perhaps the most public change in Catholicschools related to the increasing numbers of laystaff from the 1960s onward. In the first half of thetwentieth century, Catholic schools were staffedalmost entirely by members of religious orders.However, due to a decline in religious vocations,and the option that existing religious could nowchoose other forms of work, young people currentlybeing educated in Catholic schools in Australia areusually taught by lay teachers, the principals in theirschools are lay men and women, and lay peoplepredominate on their schools boards. Thus, thepresence of priests, female religious and brothers asteachers in the schools is minimal. Yet, papers likethis which portray their way of life when they werein the ascendancy should be of great interest toteachers and teacher educators at the present time.As stated from the outset, they can promotereflection on the possibility that teaching can beinfluenced by discourses of ‘vocation’ and ‘thegiving of service’, every bit as much as it can beby ‘industrial’ and ‘labour’ perspectives. Warren(1989, p. 389) made a similar point over 16 yearsago when he stated:

If we understand teachers and schools in moreintimate detail, we shall have more complete andcompelling histories, and we ought to be able toask more informed questions about the educa-tional process, identify contextual influencesmore confidently, and sift more carefully foreffects. We shall probably also have more heated

debate or at least more earnest conversationamong scholars, teachers and policymakers.

To put it another way, a consideration of the livesof the teaching religious still has the potentialto challenge our thinking about teaching andthe lives of teachers even at a time when theythemselves have almost vanished from the educa-tional landscape.

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