Report N O T SO O L D S C H O O L A radical 1950s project designed to educate children stranded in remote Australian cattle stations is now thriving – and its success has a lot to teach us about homeschooling in lockdown, says Jonathan Margolis f there is one thing about the past few tions in the Australian outback have been ‘As for how being homeschooled outside it was 45 inside. Most of his play was months on which there is near global con- educated remotely. equipped me for life,’ Tanya says, ‘it set me spent hunting with Aboriginal children who Isensus, it is that remotely educating chil- Until 2003, this wasn’t even done on the up so well. Admittedly, it didn’t offer social laughed at him having to spend from 8am to dren online has not been a great success. internet, but on shortwave radio. What’s skills or art or games, so we bush kids were 5pm learning by the radio. A viral YouTube rant in March by one more, in the 1950s, pioneering pupils of desperately shy, but my three Rs were well Cossons’ father was a policeman, and the Israeli mother of four, on only the second School of the Air, as the system is called, often and truly covered. Most importantly, it fos- police-supplied radio was ancient and often day of schools being closed, perhaps lived on properties with limited electricity, so tered in me a great love for learning. I went failed. A govie was also out of the question. summed it up best. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘It’s not took part in live lessons using to boarding school 1,000 Yet when he went to a regular school after working… this distance-learning thing. It’s Australian-made pedal miles away for secondary his father was posted to Alice Springs, he impossible… If we don’t die of corona, we’ll radios. If children stopped A TYPICAL DAY AT school, which I hated, but I was notably advanced and, he admits, SCHOOL OF THE AIR die of distance learning… Please, turn it pumping bicycle pedals (year 8, age 12-13) was academically equiva- coasted. He later dropped out of a law course down. Foot off the gas. Leave them be.’ underneath their desk as lent to all those in my class, at university, but still loved it. Today, when 8.10am–8.25am But there is emerging concern that right they learnt, the connection Physical activity and I went on to study and he’s not travelling the world, he sits as an up to university level, today’s young people to their schoolroom, pow- practise law for many years. independent chairman on company and 8.30am–9am could be the generation whose education ered by a generator, died. My HG ‘School of the Air was government agency boards. was trashed, or at least held back, by Covid- The empty schoolrooms (Middle years home group: also so much fun. We were Cossons has a folder his parents kept of 19. Professor Alan Smithers, director of the where School of the Air years 7, 8 and 9 all log in at the isolated and didn’t have any Centre for Education and Employment teachers took virtual classes same time. Teachers use this for other children in our lives, announcements and upskilling in Research at the University of Buckingham, – and do to this day – could general knowledge) but in this way we got to has written of the future of the UK’s children be thousands of miles from hear voices, put faces to 9am–10am ‘hanging by a thread’ – especially those from the children. A School of the Maths them in our imagination, poorer families. ‘The damage inflicted will Air class is typically peopled and listen to our beloved 10am–10.30am be, quite literally, beyond repair for a gener- by pupils on farms the size Morning tea teacher, Mrs Hodder, for ation of children.’ of a British county, scattered half an hour each day. Mrs 11am–12 midday And while social-media users and news- across a state many times Geography Hodder had the brightest, paper columnists continue to howl about bigger than France. warmest voice and we loved 12 midday–1pm the homeschooling ‘nightmare’, and even as So how effective was an English (years 8 and 9) her. Monday was assembly last week saw the phased reopening of some outback virtual education day and news day. Every 1pm–1.30pm primary schools, children of all ages, and not for people now in middle Lunch other day of the week was a just the swots, admit that they long to go age? How did School of the different lesson like Eng- 1.30pm–2.30pm back to school. Air pupils, socially dis- Science lish, social studies or maths.’ However, online schooling could be the tanced to an unimaginable Friendships with other norm for many for a while yet. In one part of extent, fare when they grew children were almost the world, such remote schooling is noth- up? And what advice can they offer to impossible, but Heaslip forged one with a Janie Joseland Bennett calling into school via radio in the 1970s; and today Joseland Bennett with friends ing new. Since 1951, tens of thousands of today’s struggling online learners? girl next door – well, 700 miles away – called children on isolated sheep and cattle sta- Tanya Heaslip, 57, is well known in Aus- Janie. After school, she and Janie, who she Aboriginal friends and eating witchetty grubs the radio back then. He his marked schoolwork, and the 1,000-mile- tralia for books on her outback childhood. didn’t meet in person for years, would sneak we found. But I’m wildly passionate about remembered it. It seems distant teacher’s dedication beams out from John Cossons’ schoolwork, 1960; Cossons now Between 1968 and 1974, some extra radio time and made what this whole question of remote education,’ she so tenuous, doesn’t it, it 60 years on. ‘You have sent another lovely she was a pupil of the turned out to be a lifelong friendship. They says. ‘We loved our teachers. Those relation- building up a relation- set, John,’ says a comment in red ink from country’s first School finally met when Heaslip’s father, worn ships that were built up over the radio were ship just with a voice? 1960. ‘You are a good boy to work so hard of the Air, set up in down by her pleading, flew her to Janie’s sta- astoundingly powerful in But it worked.’ and you are doing your colouring beauti- Alice Springs in 1951 tion for what would be a week’s sleepover. our lives. I recently Joseland Bennett’s fully, dear. I must say you wrote your diary by educationalists Today, Heaslip still lives in Alice, while her reconnected with a advice to today’s Covid kids, forced to learn stories very well indeed. There was one lit- who had the idea of friend, now Janie Joseland Bennett, is in teacher, David Ashton, remotely? ‘Make the most of this experience tle sum wrong, and you do not make your using the Royal Flying Aspen, Colorado, having worked in New and after 50 years, the because for the rest of your life you will letter W quite wide enough. Just practise it Doctor Service’s established radio net- York. She became a photographers’ agent first thing he did was never forget your period of isolated learn- on home paper, John.’ work. Children on remote stations previ- and also worked on documentaries, one of mimic my voice over ing. I feel School of the Air shaped me for the ‘I have no regrets at all about my upbring- ously had only correspondence lessons, which won an Oscar. ‘I didn’t get to go to the rest of my life, especially in the times that I ing,’ Cossons says. ‘I’d be happy to do the same and the gap between being sent work on a Academy Awards dinner, but made the Van- have drawn heavily on my resilience, curi- again. I wouldn’t be the person I am now with- mail train or plane and receiving it back ity Fair after-party, which was way more fun,’ osity and grit. Isolated learning nurtured all out it and I’m happy with who I am.’ marked could be months. she says, acknowledging that this was quite these aspects of myself.’ Another of Alice’s School of the Air alumni, Heaslip describes her family’s property a contrast from her childhood in the bush. If a picture is building of children from Kate McMaster, is now a teacher in Darwin, north of Alice Springs as ‘700 square miles Joseland Bennett’s parents had settled in well-to-do, if geographically isolated, fami- having recently moved from the family prop- of scrub, hills, creeks and silence with trips the remote north-western corner of South lies thriving in adult life despite – or because erty in the bush. McMaster, her father and to Alice for supplies often taking a day’. Her Australia to fulfil a romantic dream. Her par- of – their eccentric education, 66-year-old her two teenage sons were all educated by parents were prosperous, her father often ents were Sydney people. But her father had John Cossons, now living in Darwin, per- School of the Air. Her great- grandfather was mustering cattle in his Cessna, ‘ducking and studied agriculture with a mind to owning a haps demonstrates that School of the Air one of the school’s founders.