David, Stanley and Norman Drummond: a 'fair deal' for the New South Wales country child in schooling and welfare, 1924-1983.

Godfrey, John R. ; Ramsland, John

This article explores the contribution made by three influential education and child welfare administrators of the first half of the twentieth century who shared the same surname of 'Drummond' and a similar sectarian religious orientation and non-metropolitan background. The three Drummonds central to this study are two brothers and an unrelated namesake. The three well-known Drummonds played significant roles in the connected and overlapping fields of education and child welfare in New South Wales particularly from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s. They placed powerful emphasis on rural betterment in education and child health care that helped to provide a distinctive rural-conservative ideology for the State education system, particularly in the 1930s, with the purpose of preventing the urban drift from the vast countryside--the bush and the outback--in New South Wales. They were all obsessively concerned about 'a fair deal' and much better material provisions for country children. The notion of initiating, maintaining and further developing a coalition between the State, charitable organisations, responsible citizenry and the Protestant social gospel was clearly central to their interconnected and shared philosophical and educational thinking.

As a study, this article draws upon on earlier research and writing by Belshaw (1981), Mitchell (1975), Barcan (1998), Godfrey (1987, 1991, 2001), Godfrey and Pouw-Bray (2000) and Ramsland (1996, 1998) and seeks to demonstrate the close involvement of the three men during their professional careers in furthering these educational ideas and pursuits as well as their sphere of influence in charitable, governmental, political and bureaucratic circles. (1)

David Drummond, the long-serving influential and hard-working politician from rural Armidale in the New England district, was the New South Wales Minister of Education between 1927 and 1930 and again between 1932 and 1941; the Reverend Stanley Drummond, the dynamic Methodist clergyman who was driven by the 'social gospel' of concern for the disadvantaged and marginalised in rural society, was the founder and director of the well-known Far West Children's Scheme at seaside Manly from the mid 1920s to his death in 1943; and Norman Drummond, the dedicated government career teacher and educational administrator, was Inspector of Schools from 1935 and later Director of Primary Education of the New South Wales Department of Education which governed State schools. All three were significant and well known public figures. Stanley and Norman were brothers but David was not related. However, all three were staunch, dedicated Methodists imbued with strongly held theological traditions about social justice, self-help, and the amelioration of the poor and lame, within the context of the Protestant ethic, through support for and manipulation of the State government system and voluntary organisations.

The public careers of the three Drummonds overlapped and intertwined on many occasions and through various phases: their educational work placed an emphasis on preventing the urban drift from the countryside and providing better education and health facilities and opportunities for bush, marginalised and outback children and those under-privileged and the handicapped. There were important progressive elements in their education work that stood out.

Before any of the Drummonds had started on their life work in education and childcare, the extension and intensity of rural settlement in New South Wales in the early 1920s after the First World War had increased the demand for small rural elementary schools, after an earlier decline and deliberate closure of many one-teacher bush schools. Soldier settlement in various rural districts was a significant factor in the increase. The government was also opening up new districts to closer settlement. With the Country Party as a powerful coalition partner in the reigning conservative New South Wales government, both the Minister for Education, Albert Bruntnell, whose ministry lasted from 13 April 1922 to 17 June 1925, and the new and second Director-General of Education, S. J. Smith, who had replaced the longserving Peter Board and was his protege, felt it necessary to develop specialised forms of vocational education with agricultural and practical emphasis in rural areas. They believed that the bush and the outback needed direction in practical pursuits to sustain growth.

Twelve new rural schools in large country centres had been hurriedly established by the end of 1923 offering three year post-primary courses in elementary agriculture: agricultural nature study or farm mechanics for boys; rural domestic science or horticulture for girls (how to run a homestead or farmhouse economy); and the commercial subjects for boys and girls (how to keep the station books). (2) All this flurried educational activity in the bush was intended to lead to better organised provisions to maintain the country population in rural settings and prevent the ominous drift to the metropolis and problems of unemployment that would be created there.

Structural problems, however, quickly appeared in this ill-conceived, incomplete and poorly implemented scheme. The new courses of the newly founded rural schools were not articulated in any way with either the well-developed State high school system or the State's agricultural colleges, as both provided matriculation to tertiary levels of education. Many of the new subjects were poorly or inadequately taught due to the lack of trained teaching staff, equipment and other curriculum resources. There were, for example, no suitable classroom textbooks for the rural school curriculum. Less than a quarter of those enrolled in new rural schools completed the three year programme successfully and most of those that did so actually took up non-rural rather than rural occupations. The scheme was a disastrous failure. As well, at the same time, enrolments in the special agricultural high schools at Yanco and Hurlstone were disappointingly poor. Smith was forced to admit to the New State's Commission in 1924 that; 'We are unable to force agricultural education on an unwilling people.' (3) The implication was that there was little support by parents for the new rural school and its curriculum. Rather, the labour of their children was needed on the farm. In the country at the time, an education was not necessarily perceived as a vital asset beyond the barebones.

To remedy such matters, Smith quickly announced a revised scheme in December 1925: now the rural schools would offer 'courses in higher education with a prevocational bias towards rural pursuits.' (4) The Intermediate Certificate was extended and made available to those that attended the final year at rural schools.

Smith's revised scheme for rural schools enabled pupils who successfully passed the Intermediate Certificate to transfer then to the fourth year of an academic State high school and complete the Leaving Certificate, the highest rank in secondary education. Thus the Intermediate Certificate syllabus, an academic form of education, with a slight rural bias, was implemented in rural schools and therefore extended the predominance of its examination over all types of junior secondary schools controlled by the State government) An articulation with the rest of the public system of education was thus attempted for the benefit of country children.

When the State Labor Party won the next election and was returned to office in 1925, the new Minister of Education expanded State secondary education by abolishing the high school fees which spread the possibility of further educational opportunity more widely across all the social classes. As a result schools soon became overcrowded in both urban and rural districts. The Intermediate and Leaving Certificates as examinations became more highly valued.

The scene was thus well set for the arrival of David Drummond onto the political stage altogether with his highly active involvement in the further revision and development of education for country and isolated children. In October 1927, after Labor had lost the New South Wales election, Drummond as leader of the Country Party became Minister of Education. Education was then seen as a significant portfolio. In his first report he vigorously deplored the fact that 1,451 school classes across the State were 'improperly' housed in playground weathersheds, makeshift temporary buildings, including tents and disused railway carriages, and in the corridors and annexes of existing school building. Some classes even had to be held in the open air in playgrounds. Even church halls had to be hired in the emergency. Clearly accommodation, over the past decade, had not been able to keep up with the burgeoning school enrolments. (6) He immediately launched an ambitious and vigorous three year building programme, particularly for rural districts and small and large country towns. Many country school buildings still date, noticeably, from the late 1920s, a fact that clearly appears on extant school facades in various types of rural settings and country towns across the State.

David Henry Drummond, who first won a seat for Armidale in the Legislative Assembly of the New South Wales Parliament in 1920 as a member of the newly formed Progressive Party which later became the Country Party, was born in Sydney in 1890, the fourth son of a Scottish stonemason. He was educated in various State schools but briefly attended Scots College, Sydney, before he was compelled to begin work because of his family's impoverished financial circumstances. In October 1902 he came under the custody of the New South Wales State Children's Relief Board as a ward of the State. A childhood infection left him deaf. It is a curious fact that Stanley Drummond also was afflicted in the same way for most of his adult life. (7) Both used the disability to advantage politically. David's formative experiences, together with his strong and abiding Methodist faith, developed in him a lifelong concern for underprivileged, particularly country children, and a powerful desire to extend and improve government support for the education of the rural community, especially the most impoverished, marginalised and neglected. He took the Methodist 'social gospel' of practical amelioration very seriously and attempted throughout his political career to put it into practice.

In 1907 the young David Drummond had gone to the Armidale district as a farmhand, that is labourer, and started a life-long interest in rural pursuits, becoming successively a share-farmer and a manager of a wheat property. In 1913 he married the daughter of a well-off local grazier and obtained rural property of his own. He became particularly active in the Farmers' and Settlers' Association and in 1919 became organiser of the new Progressive Party formed by the Farmers' and Settlers' Association and the Graziers' Association of New South Wales. (8) He regarded himself as a rural politician, fighting for the rights of country people for better public utilities and social services. There were particularly strong elements of conservative rural socialism embedded in his policies.

As a farmer, politician and foundation member of the Country Party, he held the rural seat of Armidale as a stronghold of rural conservatism for twenty-two years and the education portfolio under various ministries for a total of twelve years--more than any other Minister of Education in the history of State government in New South Wales, even and especially up until the present. No one has served so long and so continuously. No one else has had the opportunity to implement such a sustained policy on behalf of public education

As Barcan has perceptively pointed out, he was an energetic and very assertive Minister of Education. (9) His strong rural roots, orientation and experiences led him, like his contemporary Stanley Drummond at a different level, to stress and to propagandise the educational and social needs and disadvantages of country children and rural education and to demand better support for them in a successful way. He stimulated the development of the agricultural high schools movement, improved their material facilities and was instrumental in obtaining a rural-based teachers' college for Armidale in 1928, the first country teachers' college in the State of New South Wales, which became a prominent model for others like Bathurst, Wagga Wagga and Lismore to follow. He also assisted the establishment of a university college in the same rural town in 1937, which was later to become a highly regarded university after the war and a major international innovator in external studies---The University of New England. He encouraged the growth and development of rural libraries and located funding for them, and helped found the Junior Farmers' Society movement which comprehensively swept across country districts and ensured that travel concessions to and from school by vehicles or boats were provided for bush and geographically isolated children. After the Second World War, when he moved on to the Federal arena of politics, he was successful in the establishment of the University of New England at Armidale as an autonomous institution. His Child Welfare Act 1939 in New South Wales provided a framework for the welfare of under privileged and neglected children for the next forty years. He died in 1965. (10) His childhood experiences as a State ward were reflected in his political concern for child welfare and the sophisticated education he briefly received at Scots College gave him an abiding belief in the power of a good education to transform the lives of the under privileged and the marginalised of society.

When Drummond achieved the Ministry of Education for the first time in 1928 under the conservative Bavin State government, he responded promptly to the Farmers' and Settlers' Association's well politicised complaints about the poorness and relative lack of educational resources and facilities for children in country districts. Most of the one million pounds increase in the Department of Education' s building grant in 1928 went to the countryside and non-metropolitan areas. (11) The new buildings, according to Walter Elliott, the Chief Inspector at the time, were likely to cause enrolments to increase. At Bathurst High School in the Central West wheat and sheep district, for example, he predicted that 'now that the school is in excellent [new] buildings, there is a good prospect of increase in numbers.' (12) Elliott was referring to the strong possibility of diverting country students at the secondary level from private boarding colleges. Enrolments in fourth and fifth year in the Leaving Certificate course dramatically increased in the following year as he accurately predicted. (13) Similarly at Gosford High School in a fruit growing and dairying district on the Central Coast in 1929, Elliott linked 'an improvement in the tendency to remain at school' with the fact that the school now occupied 'new buildings'. (14) Parents in country districts clearly had now a stronger faith in the quality of secondary education provided directly by the State, and especially the Intermediate and Learning Certificates as a passport into respectable occupations for their children.

The opening of Armidale Teachers' College in 1928 was particularly another significant coup for David Drummond in his desire for education betterment in rural areas. The College was established in his own electorate and the political headquarters of the New England New State Movement. The establishment of Armidale Teachers' College effectively broke the monopoly that the metropolis of Sydney had on teacher training and teacher education. While it began in a temporary wooden building, by 1931 an imposing building was completed on the old gaol site in a prominent position overlooking the town of Armidale--a building that looked like it would last forever, and it has. The building at the time rivalled the quality of buildings and resources at Sydney Teachers' College in the metropolis. The teacher trainees at Armidale were from the very beginning imbued with the ideology of country cultural services, values and interests and directed to teach subsequently in country schools, rather than be lured away to the 'wicked' metropolis of Sydney. (15) Promotion incentives in remote country districts where teaching staff were scarce, supported this scheme. An emphasis was placed on training teachers in the skills of small school (bush) teaching and methods of how to cope with the problems of remoteness and isolation. A deliberate policy of recruiting trainees from State high schools in country towns to Armidale was pursued energetically, making the desired socialisation and indoctrination an easier matter. Trained teachers from Armidale Teachers' College were to act as David Drummond's frontline or shock troops in the country districts of New South Wales to stem the flow of the urban drift of rural youth. This approach was reinforced by making such teacher trainee scholarships tenable at Armidale Teachers' College. Many Armidale trained teachers worked out their entire teaching career in country or rural areas. Many were promoted to the top of their profession outside metropolitan areas. They became career sojourners of legend in the bush. The whole enterprise turned out to be a massive success story.

When his coalition political party came to power in 1927, Drummond was at the time the most junior of Cabinet ministers. During the two terms of his ministry (from 18 October 1927 to 3 November 1930 and from 15 May 1932 to 16 May 1941), however, he strongly consolidated his position in the Cabinet and was well recognised on both sides of the House for his dedication to his portfolio and his growing expertise in the cause of education. He was widely respected by the general public, particularly in the bush. He also kept control of his portfolio well as an astute administrator and was given a relatively free hand despite the financial restrictions that the 1930s Depression imposed. He served in five ministries, one term under Bavin, three under the Stevens-Bruxner coalition and finally in the Mair-Bruxner coalition. Drummond's modus operandi was to control the pace and direction of education reform, including examination reform and to ensure that changes to the system evolved slowly, cautiously and carefully. His response to the Wallace Committee of 1933 to 1935 is typical. He exhibited his cautious, gradualist approach to examination reform soon after the tabling of its findings. Reform and change, due to his working philosophy, needed to move calmly and be guided by consensus through committees. (16) He was keenly aware of public opinion, which tended to be conservative about education.

Drummond played a major role in developing and maintaining the impact of the Junior Farmers' Movement (known as the Rural Youth Movement after 1966). In 1928, using his powers as Minister of Education, he ensured that the Junior Farmers' Movement was accepted and vigorously promoted as an intra-curricula activity in public schools throughout the State. The aims of Junior Farmers' Clubs were to develop leadership and interest in rural affairs and to encourage better and more modern and scientific methods in agriculture and animal husbandry. Under Drummond's mentorship, the movement gained ground rapidly across the vast State of New South Wales. Indeed, it worked better than the more formal aspects of agricultural curriculum and was more progressive in its implementation. Club members found the activities more stimulating and attractive than the more routine classroom procedures. In 1929 there were forty-three clubs in public schools with 800 members; twenty years later there were over 270 clubs and 8,000 members. Each member focused on a project which popularly included vegetable growing, poultry raising, cookery, needlework and cow and calf rearing. (17) Its intent was obvious--to interest young people in rural pursuits and to enhance their skills. In other words, to motivate them to stay on the land. Even oral presentation skills were enhanced and developed through debating competitions between adjacent clubs in various country districts. Teachers frequently participated as adjudicators. The minds of the future leaders of the country culture were being formed and refined with practical experiments in scientific agriculture. Oral presentation skills were also high on the agenda. Future country politicians could be moulded.

David Drummond was a contemporary of Stanley Drummond, and supported his work with outback children throughout his time as the New South Wales Minister of Education and beyond. It became a strong alliance between the State and a voluntary organisation. The work of Stanley Drummond and his legendary status clearly continued to maintain itself as an iconic presence and even to grow after his tragic death in 1943, as is colourfully and popularly demonstrated in a Manly sports festival souvenir publication in 1969. (18)

The work of the Reverend Stanley Drummond, a member of the Methodist clergy at Cobar, might well be compared to the work of the Reverend John Flynn, a Presbyterian who pioneered the Australian Flying Doctor Service. Both were humanitarians on the highest level and charismatic public figures and both achieved almost awe-inspiring results for the remote outback of Australia. The magnificent modern complex of the Far West Home in Wentworth Street, Manly, a seaside suburb of Sydney, supported by public subscription and some government funding, is a fitting monument to its founder. He was concerned with malnutrition and lack of total medical care which many children in the Far West suffered. His almost obsessive focus was on the physical health needs of outback children who were stranded in isolated, difficult places with heat and glare, dust and flies. He started modestly a seaside school holiday camp for outback children. At one of those almost destined meetings, Dr G. Moncrieff Barron, a prominent and well-regarded Manly medico, became interested and involved for the rest of his long professional career. Many other local and Sydney doctors gave their generous and untiring support. There were fourteen doctors on the honorary medical staff of the Far West Home by the 1940s. (19) Stanley Drummond's networked philanthropic empire centred on seaside Manly and eventually ranged from Boggabilla in the north to Moree, Walgett, Narrabri and Cobar; from Condobolin to Broken Hill and all points in between to the south-western corner of the State.

By the time Stanley Drummond died of cancer in April 1943, he was known as the legendary 'Drummond of the Far West' throughout the outback of New South Wales as well as the metropolis. The scheme that he established in the mid-1920s originally provided a seaside holiday at the beachside suburb of Manly for those who had never seen the sea and medical and dental care for outback children from the far western districts of New South Wales. It began in a comparatively low-key way. Before the Second World War an average of ninety outback children, however, were brought to Manly each year. By 1943 there were 250 children being treated in Sydney for medical and dental problems all year round. There were 120 committees with their own regional networks established throughout New South Wales with headquarters in Manly. By then the scheme included four clinic trains which travelled all around the State via railroad moving up and down the Bourke, Cobar and Brewarrina lines doing infant clinic work. (20) Its philanthropic work continued to expand even more dramatically after the war and well into the 1960s after which it began to diminish because of the introduction of several government agencies. Stanley's scheme was financed by voluntary support, usually in the form of annual subscriptions and was soon supported by a sympathetic State government education minister--David Drummond. In specific terms, for example, David Drummond through his ministry established a special public school adjacent to the Far West Children's Home in Wentworth Street, Manly and supplied it with State teachers who were required to continue the eduction of Far West children while they were convalescing at Manly or undertaking medical treatment. The school still operates today as the Royal Far West School at Manly.

Stanley Gillich Drummond was the eldest of the three Drummonds and was born in 1884 in the small rural village of Attunga. Brought up in the strict Protestant rural tradition of his family, he was admitted to the Methodist ministry in 1914 and was eventually appointed to the charge of the Methodist church's geographically vast Far West Mission centred at Cobar between 1924 and 1928. Because of his rural background and experience, he developed a strong and progressive health scheme at Manly together with his wife and others, which was initiated in 1924. By 1926 he had enlisted the co-operation of large networks of country government teachers which came through the support of David Drummond as Minister of Eduction, local rural clergy and police to select needy bush children to be brought from the country to the seaside for medical, surgical and dental treatment and a holiday from the harshness of life in the arid outback of New South Wales. After 1930 the scheme expanded dramatically in health facilities under the intrepid Stanley Drummond's influence as the founding father of a major state-wide operation that only excluded the metropolitan areas and provided vigorously and exclusively for underprivileged bush children. (21) By 1935 an especially designed hospital which was the home and the administrative centre for the Far West Children's Scheme was opened in Wentworth Street, Manly, with extensive modern and innovative medical and educational facilities.

The Far West Home at Manly was frequently depicted in popular accounts as an outpost of advanced civilisation, a place where modern technologies of child health care could be rigorously applied to 'many little folk of the great outback who are many, many miles from doctors and hospitals, and who needed treatment or a holiday at the sea-side to make them well'. (22)

A new purpose built two storey building at Wentworth Street, Manly--the Drummond Far West Home--was opened officially on 8 May 1935 as the culmination of years of intensive fund-raising by the many dedicated civic supporters of the scheme which was supplemented by the provision of public funds from the New South Wales government strongly influenced and supported by David Drummond as Minister of Education. The building had finally cost 16,000 [pounds sterling] raised by public subscription, a government subsidy of 6,000 [pounds sterling] and a gift from Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, the famous aviator. (23)

The Home as a site for human habitation and treatment of country children had clearly designated areas for infants, older children and young adults. In 1935 it was described as a 'beautifully planned, well-furnished, meticulously equipped institution' and so it was. The four dormitories on the ground floor, each in a different colour, had accommodation each for twelve children. On the top floor there was an observation wing, divided into glassed-in cubicles, where children were placed on arrival until they were examined by the honorary doctor, George Moncrieff Barron, medical treatment prescribed and 'drafted into their places' in the Home for the period of their stay. The separated nursery on the same floor was furnished and equipped by the Kingsford Smith Fund. The long 'airy' hospital ward was filled with cots and its floors were covered with soft rubber inlaid tiles and decorated with illustrations of Noah's Ark and the animals. At one end of the upper floor was a special sunroom for exercise with a padded rubber floor to protect delicate limbs, huge 'vita-glassed' windows specially treated to allow the penetration of ultra-violet rays from the sun. Here the children were to receive curative treatment for infantile paralysis and other serious physical ailments. The flat roof of the building was used as an equipped playground for the children when not at the nearby ocean beach swimming. At the time the place was one of the 'most up to date and modernly equipped health homes in the country'. (24) And a commentator about the design exclaimed: Here are gracious halls and bright rooms, made for happiness and freedom. Good ventilation, splendid lighting and a wide variety in colouring mark the dormitories. The dining-room is particularly charming and has small tables topped with plate glass that make each group of children feel an individual group instead of getting the effect of sitting at long tables of an 'institution'. As in an attractive home, beautiful flowers are plentiful in this room, and the whole atmosphere is conducive to an increase in young appetites. (25)

Norman Drummond, a younger brother of Stanley, was born three years after David. He was the son, like Stanley, of a school teacher and former tradesman and was born in the school residence at Laguna near Wollombi and Cessnock on 3 May 1893, the second youngest in a family of eight, two boys and six girls. His parents were both devout Methodists and his elder brother Stanley was to become an ordained Methodist minister as already recounted. His early education was in the Monaro district where his father taught successively in small bush schools at Nimmitabel, Springfield and Rock Flat. His father, James Drummond, as his early sole teacher profoundly influenced his thinking and philosophical attitudes. James believed that teaching was second only to the Methodist ministry as a vocation befitting a committed Christian who believed in the social gospel of good works. Norman later attended Goulburn Public School, travelling to and from his father's teacher's residence up country over rough roads in a horse drawn conveyance. Getting to and from school required an epic bush track journey each day.

Between 1908 and 1910 Norman Drummond boarded in Sydney and attended the prestigious Sydney Boys' High School, a State school, and excelled in all academic subjects. He went on to Sydney Teachers' Training College in 1911 and 1912 before he was appointed as an assistant teacher to Drummoyne Public School. He commenced evening classes in Arts at Sydney University in 1914. He soon became well known in educational circles as a dynamic and innovative young teacher.

Early in 1916 he enlisted and joined the 2nd Battalion of the A.I.F. with which he served in France and Belgium. After the war he attended London University in 1919 before being repatriated in 1920. In 1921 he married Elizabeth Alcock, a childhood friend, at Stanmore Methodist Church. Both remained devout and active Methodists throughout their married life.

Norman Drummond graduated with Bachelor of Arts from Sydney University in 1923 and was soon appointed headmaster successively of schools at Wyalong, Canowindra and Murrumburrah, gaining major successful teaching, administrative and community experience amidst the country mores and folkways of rural New South Wales. He returned to Sydney to become headmaster of Newtown Central Demonstration School close to Sydney University and Sydney Teachers' College. At the latter he also lectured, on a part-time basis, in Practical Education from 1930 to 1934 while maintaining his teaching career. In 1935 it was claimed that he became the youngest Inspector of Schools to be appointed and he was stationed at Inverell and at Forbes, which were demanding widespread country districts, before he was transferred to Head Office in Sydney and became a Staff Inspector in 1941.

During the Second World War, Drummond organised the Civilian Aid Service in New South Wales. In 1949 he was appointed Director of Primary Education, with the additional appointment of Deputy Director-General in 1952 until his retirement in 1956. His influence in public schools state-wide was immense.

On his retirement from the Department of Education, he concentrated his energies on the field of Special Education, which was just emerging strongly in educational circles and in which he took a keen interest. In 1957 he was an Australian delegate to the International Conference of the Junior Red Cross at Geneva. He became a member of a World Committee on Special Education as well as the International Society for the Welfare of the Disabled from 1957 to 1969; a member of the Rehabilitation International Education Commission from 1969 to 1980; and the Rehabilitation International East Asia and the Pacific Education Sub-Commission from 1977 to 1980. He was chair of similar national committees and frequently travelled overseas to deliver seminars on Special Education. He became Australia's most well-known expert on Special Education at the time.

His interest in and enthusiasm about Special Education brought him in the later part of his career closer to his late brother's prodigious work at the Far West. He became a Councillor of the Far West Children's Scheme in 1945, two years after his brother's death, and held the position of Chairman from 1958 to 1965 and from 1968 until his death. (26) He published his pioneering book Special Education in Australia in 1980 which remained for many years a standard text and reference. (27) The short ninety-five page book dealt with the development, policy and practice of Special Education in Australia in the 1970s and includes a brief historical survey, starting with the founding of the Institution for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind in Sydney in 1860. He made many comments about the special educational needs of country children in isolated places. (28)

When Norman Drummond died at the age of eighty-nine in April 1983, the headlines in The Manly Daily, read: 'Force behind Far West plan dies, aged 89'. He died at the War Veterans' Home at Collaroy on Sydney's northern beaches, after a short illness. In 1965 he had been awarded an OBE for his services. (29) He was the last of the three Drummonds who had played a significant role in New South Wales education in the first half of the twentieth century. The influence of these three men in the countryside of New South Wales was immense.

David, Stanley and Norman Drummond, each in their particular way, significantly influenced the shaping of government education and childcare policy and practice, especially for country children, in the first half of the twentieth century in New South Wales. Their common heritage of Methodism and involvement in putting into practice the 'social gospel' profoundly underpinned their educational philosophy and actions which emphasised an alliance between government and private voluntary institutions in delivering educational betterment for the community as a whole, especially bush, outback and rural children and the handicapped and underprivileged. Each took the notion of responsible public citizenship in a democracy seriously in his life's work and was dedicated in achieving his ends by determination, hard work and manipulation of whatever resources that came to hand. The three were motivated by a desire to restore and regenerate country life. The inevitability of the urban drift was, nevertheless, in itself unpreventable. The three men did much, however, to shape the provisions made for outback and isolated children in New South Wales in the first half of the twentieth century.

Notes

(1) J. Belshaw, 'Drummond, David Henry 1880-1965' in Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Searle (eds) Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 8, 1981, pp. 344-5; Bruce Mitchell, Teachers, Education, and Politics: A history of organisations of public school teachers in New South Wales, St. Lucia, 1975; Alan Barcan, Two Centuries of Education in New South Wales, Sydney, 1998; John R. Godfrey, Influences on the development of the New South Wales Intermediate Certificate Examination: 1930-1957, Ann Arbor Michigan, 1989; John R. Godfrey, 'New South Wales Intermediate Certificate Examination reform: 1930-1957', Journal of Educatianal Administration and History, vol. 23, no. 1, 1991, pp. 54-66; John R. Godfrey, 'David Henry Drummond: Education Minister and cautious reformer', Unicorn http://www.Austcolled.com.au/new.html 2001; John R. Godfrey and A. Pouw-Bray, "'I believe in fair and bonny play": David H. Drummond and the State Aid Issue: 1930 to 1962' Educational Research and Perspectives, vol. 27, no. 2, 2000, pp. 63-74; John Ramsland, 'The Far West Scheme and the myth of Stanley Drummond and the Outback Child', Childhood, Citizenship, Culture: Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society, vol. 2, 26th Annual Conference, Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology, 1996, pp. 565-76; John Ramsland, 'Schooling Outback Children in Post-Colonial Australia, 1901-1950', in Majorela Czeslaw, et al. (eds) Schooling in Changing Societies: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, Paedagogica Historica Supplementary Series vol. 4, Gent, 1998, pp. 312-27.

(2) Mark Askew, The development of secondary education in New South Wales: the role of Walter Elliott, PhD thesis, The University of New South Wales, 1997; also Barcan, p. 207.

(3) E.M. Campbell, S.M. Smith--His contribution to the development of education in N.S.W., ME thesis, Sydney University, 1967; also Askew, p. 190.

(4) Education, 15 January 1926; also Askew, p. 190; Barcan, p. 207.

(5) Godfrey, Influences on the development of the New South Wales Intermediate Certificate Examination, p. 8.

(6) Askew, p. 189.

(7) Belshaw, ADB, vol. 8.

(8) Belshaw, ADB, vol. 8.

(9) Barcan, p.214; see also John R. Godfrey and J. Ramsland, "'The cautiousness of the Minister is to be commended rather than condemned": The Role of David Drummond, Minister of Education, in New South Wales examination reform, 1932-1941', Journal of Educational Administration and History, vol. 31, no. 2, 1999, pp. 75-95; and Godfrey and Pouw-Bray.

(10) Belshaw, ADB, vol. 8.

(11) Barcan, p. 208.

(12) Cited in Askew, p. 246.

(13) School Inspection Report 1928, Archives of Bathurst High School, Bathurst, NSW.

(14) School Inspection Report 1929, Archives of Gosford High School, Gosford, New South Wales.

(15) Barcan, p. 208; also J. Burnswoods and J. Fletcher, Sydney and the Bush: A Pictorial History of Education in New South Wales. New South Wales Department of Education, Sydney, 1980, p. 196.

(16) Godfrey, Influences on the development of the New South Wales Intermediate Certificate Examination, pp. 371-87; also Godfrey, 'New South Wales Intermediate Certificate Examination reform: 1930-1957'; Godfrey, 'David Henry Drummond'; Godfrey and Ramsland, 'The cautiousness of the Minister is to be commended rather than condemned'.

(17) Burnswoods and Fletcher, p. 201.

(18) Ramsland, 'The Far West Scheme and the myth of Stanley Drummond and the Outback Child', 1996, pp. 565-76; Manly Spectacular Sports Festival Souvenir, Manly Municipal Council, Manly, 1969, p. 7.

(19) 'The Reverend Drummond', Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), 26 April 1943 (This article reports the death of the Reverend Stanley Drummond and his work for the Far West Children's Scheme).

(20) 'The Reverend Drummond', SMH, 26 April 1943.

(21) See Ramsland, 'The Far West Scheme and the myth of Stanley Drummond and the Outback Child', 1996.

(22) Frances E. Baker, 'Correspondence School Hospital Fund', The Outpost. The (Annual) Magazine of the Correspondence School, 1944, pp. 21-2.

(23) 'The Far West Children's Home, Manly', SMH, 12 July 1934.

(24) 'Where Good Works Prosper. Far West Health Home at Manly', SMH Women's Supplement, 2 May 1925.

(25) Meta Maclean, 'Drummond of the Far West', Manly Daily, Manly, n.d.p. 200.

(26) Anon, Royal Far West Children's Health Scheme. Diamond Jubilee, 1924-1984, Souvenir, Royal Far West Children's Health Scheme, Manly, 1984.

(27) Norman Drummond, Special Education in Australia, Royal Far West Children's Health Scheme, Manly, 1980.

(28) Drummond, Special Education in Australia.

(29) 'Force behind Far West plan dies, aged 89', Manly Daily, 9 April 1983.

John R. Godfrey

School of Indigenous Australian Studies

Edith Cowan University

John Ramsland

School of Liberal Studies

The University of Newcastle