Australian Women's Book Review: Online

Hecate's
Australian Women's Book Review

ISSN 1033-9434
Editor:  Barbara Brook
Contributing Assistant Editor:  Katie Hughes
Photomontage:  Set in Stone, Adele Flood

Volume 12, 2000

Teaching life

D.J. Dorothy Jean Ross by Barbara Falk with Cecile Trioli, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, hardback.

Reviewed by Donna Dwyer.

This is an intriguing work: a biography of an eminent educationalist, Dorothy Jean Ross, or D.J., as she was known to her friends, Headmistress of Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar (MCEGGS/Merton Hall), from 1938 to 1955, by another educationalist, Barbara Falk, who was also a long-standing friend. The result is not only an exceptional personal and professional portrait of an educational innovator, it is a chronicle of middle- class girls' education in Melbourne from Edwardian times to the nineteen fifties.

Dorothy Ross was a much revered and charismatic headmistress who was very influential in the lives of a large number of her pupils. Indeed, I can confirm Barbara Falk's anecdotal account of the five MCEGGS classmates she interviewed as a group and their happiness in Ross' “democratic school”. One of my friends, who has fond memories of her time at MCEGGS, has a small sketch of D.J. on her wall. But Dorothy Ross' influence was felt well beyond MCEGGS. Barbara Falk (with Cecile Trioli as co-worker in research, interviewing and manuscript preparation) has set out to interrogate the “icon”, uncover the “real” Dorothy Ross and place her life in its historical context.

Chapter 1, “The Making of the Icon”, covers a considerable sweep of territory, and is probably the most demanding for readers unfamiliar with the history of MCEGGS. It weaves together the personal and professional life of Dorothy Ross from her childhood in the financially secure upper-middle-class environment of Toorak, through her excellent academic achievements at school and university. We glimpse the education of middle-class girls in schools long since gone: Miss Alice Corr's sub-primary school in Williams Road, Miss Adderley's Appin Ladies' College in Windsor, and The Priory, in Alma Road St Kilda, which presumably did not teach Greek, a prerequisite for admission to the Melbounre University Arts Faculty. This omission left Dorothy with no option but to begin her studies at university in the Law Department. Her time at university, like many women in this era, was socially segregated from her male companions. Dorothy was a member of the Princess Ida Club. At evening parties, she was chaperoned by an older woman.

Falk details Dorothy Ross' passionate commitment to the principles and practices of New Education Fellowship (NEF) and the changes she made at MCEGGS in her time as headmistress. Finally, the chapter touches briefly on the extraordinary events which Falk argues “has enshrined Miss Ross' regime in public memory as paradise lost”. In 1958, four terms after Miss Ross' successor, Miss Mountain had taken up her post, thirty-six members of staff left the school and approximately sixty pupils were withdrawn, leaving a deeply divided school and community. Conservative, communist-fearing, middle class Melbourne in the 1950s deemed Dorothy Ross' democratic school “pink”.

The following chapters revisit these themes in more detail. In particular, Chapter 2 traces the development of Dorothy Ross' educational philosophy and her contact with leading personalities in education in Victoria and through the New Education Fellowship in England and Europe. In the process, Falk provides an insightful account of teacher-training in the independent school system in post World War 1 in Victoria. In 1938 Dorothy Ross was appointed headmistress of MCEGGS. The outbreak of World War II would find her coping with a school housed in seven locations. The Southern Command had taken up an offer from the school to use its premises, duly issuing the school with a requisition notice and requiring that the students be evacuated. Battling with a car operating on a gas producer, Ross' wry humour shows through: “Any calmness I may show”, she wrote, “is through prayer and fasting”.

Dorothy Ross had a long-term relationship with the younger Mary Davis, whom she promoted and schooled, first at MCEGGS, when she appointed her head of the junior school. On her recommendation, Mary was appointed headmistress of St Catherine's in 1950. Falk examines their relationship in the context of an era, which sealed off the male world for many of the generation of headmistresses who led their schools in the mid 1920s and 1930s. Indeed Falk details a number of woman-centred relationships in independent schools. At Ruyton Girls' School, parents and Council voiced “objections which could not readily be put down on paper”. In the conservative climate of MCEGGS no such objection was raised against Dorothy Ross, surely another tribute to the regard in which she was held?

Although Dorothy Ross did not keep a journal and left few handwritten notes or records of private meetings, Falk has produced an insightful, thoroughly researched biography of an important educationalist and her impact on female education.

Donna Dwyer is a senior lecturer in the Department of Communication, Language and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Technology, with research interests in the history of women's education.

Hecate's Australian Women's Book Review

ISSN 1033-9434		Editor: Barbara Brook Contributing Assistant Editor: Katie Hughes *Photomontage: Set in Stone, Adele Flood*
Volume 12, 2000

Teaching life D.J. Dorothy Jean Ross by Barbara Falk with Cecile Trioli, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, hardback. Reviewed by Donna Dwyer. This is an intriguing work: a biography of an eminent educationalist, Dorothy Jean Ross, or D.J., as she was known to her friends, Headmistress of Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar (MCEGGS/Merton Hall), from 1938 to 1955, by another educationalist, Barbara Falk, who was also a long-standing friend. The result is not only an exceptional personal and professional portrait of an educational innovator, it is a chronicle of middle- class girls' education in Melbourne from Edwardian times to the nineteen fifties. Dorothy Ross was a much revered and charismatic headmistress who was very influential in the lives of a large number of her pupils. Indeed, I can confirm Barbara Falk's anecdotal account of the five MCEGGS classmates she interviewed as a group and their happiness in Ross' “democratic school”. One of my friends, who has fond memories of her time at MCEGGS, has a small sketch of D.J. on her wall. But Dorothy Ross' influence was felt well beyond MCEGGS. Barbara Falk (with Cecile Trioli as co-worker in research, interviewing and manuscript preparation) has set out to interrogate the “icon”, uncover the “real” Dorothy Ross and place her life in its historical context. Chapter 1, “The Making of the Icon”, covers a considerable sweep of territory, and is probably the most demanding for readers unfamiliar with the history of MCEGGS. It weaves together the personal and professional life of Dorothy Ross from her childhood in the financially secure upper-middle-class environment of Toorak, through her excellent academic achievements at school and university. We glimpse the education of middle-class girls in schools long since gone: Miss Alice Corr's sub-primary school in Williams Road, Miss Adderley's Appin Ladies' College in Windsor, and The Priory, in Alma Road St Kilda, which presumably did not teach Greek, a prerequisite for admission to the Melbounre University Arts Faculty. This omission left Dorothy with no option but to begin her studies at university in the Law Department. Her time at university, like many women in this era, was socially segregated from her male companions. Dorothy was a member of the Princess Ida Club. At evening parties, she was chaperoned by an older woman. Falk details Dorothy Ross' passionate commitment to the principles and practices of New Education Fellowship (NEF) and the changes she made at MCEGGS in her time as headmistress. Finally, the chapter touches briefly on the extraordinary events which Falk argues “has enshrined Miss Ross' regime in public memory as paradise lost”. In 1958, four terms after Miss Ross' successor, Miss Mountain had taken up her post, thirty-six members of staff left the school and approximately sixty pupils were withdrawn, leaving a deeply divided school and community. Conservative, communist-fearing, middle class Melbourne in the 1950s deemed Dorothy Ross' democratic school “pink”. The following chapters revisit these themes in more detail. In particular, Chapter 2 traces the development of Dorothy Ross' educational philosophy and her contact with leading personalities in education in Victoria and through the New Education Fellowship in England and Europe. In the process, Falk provides an insightful account of teacher-training in the independent school system in post World War 1 in Victoria. In 1938 Dorothy Ross was appointed headmistress of MCEGGS. The outbreak of World War II would find her coping with a school housed in seven locations. The Southern Command had taken up an offer from the school to use its premises, duly issuing the school with a requisition notice and requiring that the students be evacuated. Battling with a car operating on a gas producer, Ross' wry humour shows through: “Any calmness I may show”, she wrote, “is through prayer and fasting”. Dorothy Ross had a long-term relationship with the younger Mary Davis, whom she promoted and schooled, first at MCEGGS, when she appointed her head of the junior school. On her recommendation, Mary was appointed headmistress of St Catherine's in 1950. Falk examines their relationship in the context of an era, which sealed off the male world for many of the generation of headmistresses who led their schools in the mid 1920s and 1930s. Indeed Falk details a number of woman-centred relationships in independent schools. At Ruyton Girls' School, parents and Council voiced “objections which could not readily be put down on paper”. In the conservative climate of MCEGGS no such objection was raised against Dorothy Ross, surely another tribute to the regard in which she was held? Although Dorothy Ross did not keep a journal and left few handwritten notes or records of private meetings, Falk has produced an insightful, thoroughly researched biography of an important educationalist and her impact on female education. Donna Dwyer is a senior lecturer in the Department of Communication, Language and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Technology, with research interests in the history of women's education.