Part Three

‘The Corpse’s Frequent Kicks’

Auckland Teachers College, 1965 – 1986

by Cameron Gregan*

In 1962, the Commission on Education released the ‘Currie’ report, which recommended that changes be made to Aotearoa’s teachers’ colleges to increase academic standards and to attract better-qualified trainees. At the same time, teachers’ colleges were expected to train more and more teachers. The student community was already feeling the negative consequences of these political decisions in the early 1960s. But from 1965 onwards, the student community would begin to disintegrate as Auckland Teachers College succumbed to pressure to expand and modernise.

It is worth clarifying at this point that from 1965, two institutions called 72 Epsom Avenue home. Primary trainees were still part of Auckland Teachers College. But in early 1964, the College’s post-primary department had broken away to become Auckland Post-primary Teachers College (or Auckland Secondary Teachers College, as it came to be known). This series investigates how political and organisational decisions affected the student community of Auckland Teachers College. Therefore, references to Auckland Post-primary Teachers College will be sparse.

A Thoroughly Modern Institution

By the early 1960s, the number of trainees attending Auckland Teachers College was causing difficulties for the College’s administration. Consequently, trainees’ timetables were reworked in 1965. Previously, trainees attended the College from 9:00am to 3:30pm, Monday through Friday, and their timetables allocated time to eating, socialising, and cultural activities. But from 1965, trainees instead contended with a ‘block’ timetable (similar to University students’ timetables). When announcing the change, principal Norman Lovegrove stressed that students would have to take greater responsibility for their own learning, as “during the large blocks of unscheduled time, students would not be supervised”.

Norman Lovegrove, Principal of Auckland Teachers College from 1962 to 1965. From Manuka 1965.

Further changes were made to trainees’ timetables when Norman Lovegrove was replaced as principal by Duncan McGhie in 1965. These changes anticipated the traditional two-year primary teaching course at Auckland Teachers College being replaced by a three-year course, as recommended by the Currie report and actioned in 1968. By consequence of this change, trainees enjoyed greater choice as to what subjects they studied. In addition, ‘sections’ now had to be organised according to subject-area instead of alphabetically.

Duncan McGhie, Principal of Auckland Teachers College from 1965 to 1983. From Manuka 1965.

With these changes to trainees’ timetables, Auckland Teachers College ceased to resemble a secondary school and began to resemble a pseudo-university. Consequently, trainees began to relate differently to Auckland Teachers College from 1965. But trainees were already chafing against the College’s strict rules. This is evident when trainees were caught drinking alcohol during a 1966 dance, when alcohol was still forbidden at Auckland Teachers College social events. The incident was reported in the College’s student magazine, Quadwrangle, and the publication noted that those trainees were not the only trainees drinking; just the only trainees unlucky (or reckless) enough to be caught. The publication also acknowledged Duncan McGhie for treating the rule-breakers like adults and allowing the Auckland Teachers College Student Executive to decide their punishment. But McGhie learned from the incident, and alcohol was served at social events from 1968. Alcohol was to play a larger and larger part in socialising at Auckland Teachers College in the 1970s. Until in 1981, Manuka reported on a dance as follows: “Many of us can’t remember anything that happened after the first ten minutes… Those that can… should be ashamed of themselves.”

The 1980 Auckland Teachers College Student Executive, posing with their beverage of choice: Double Brown. From Manuka 1980.

From 1965 to 1983, other rules of Auckland Teachers College were relaxed. By 1973, students were allowed to wear jeans and jandals to classes (as opposed to suits and dresses). But while Auckland Teachers College might no longer have resembled a secondary school, there were some standards which Duncan McGhie was committed to maintaining. For example, in 1972, McGhie denied a request from the Student Executive to have a contraceptive vending machine installed at 72 Epsom Avenue. McGhie reasoned that trainees were paid employees of the Auckland Education Board, and therefore, their salaries were paid by Aotearoa’s tax-payers who expected certain things of Aotearoa’s teachers. This arrangement was to change in 1983, when trainees’ salaries were replaced with granted standard tertiary bursaries. That caused trainees’ attitudes towards Auckland Teachers College, and its staff, to change once again. As explained by the editor of Manuka in 1977:

“The reality is that teacher trainees who come to Auckland Teachers College wish to in as brief a time as possible, and with as little personal sacrifice as possible, become teachers. In other words, they are not prepared to be involved with ongoing campus activities.”

One staff-member observed a similar change in trainees’ attitudes towards the College and its staff during their time teaching at the College, from the 1950s to early 1980s. “These days students pay to come to college and there must be a change in attitude. They are paying to get what they can from the college.” This change was regretted by staff-members, who valued their personal connections with their students but struggled to cope with their expanding classes. Issues were experienced as early as 1964, when a staff-student council was established but collapsed. And come 1974, Manuka was lamenting that “there would appear to be no general provision for informal communication between staff and students.”

In addition, as changes to their timetables forced trainees to assume greater responsibility for their studies, changes to Auckland Teachers College’s organisation forced trainees to assume greater responsibility for the social events which previously unified the student community. The Auckland Teachers College Student Executive assumed most of this responsibility. In addition to being obliged to the national associations which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s (such as the Student Teachers Association of New Zealand, or STANZ). While not always popular among trainees, the Student Executive displayed more enthusiasm for the student community than Auckland Teachers Colleges’ student community itself. For example, in 1965, Quadwrangle joked about how quickly the Student Executive would mount the stage during weekly assemblies; while the rest of the student community arrived late. Given the responsibility thrust upon trainees in the period from 1965 to 1986, I would argue that Auckland Teachers College no longer deserved the title of glorified secondary school. Instead, in terms of its organisation, the College was beginning to resemble a pseudo-university.

Lost Heritage

From 1965 to 1986, the decisions which resulted in Auckland Teachers College ceasing to resemble a secondary school were justified on the basis that Auckland Teachers College was growing (and needed to grow), and needed to produce teachers with depth of knowledge as opposed to breadth of experience. Unfortunately, these decisions would make organising events which involved the whole student community more difficult. This was already difficult, given the sheer number of trainees attending Auckland Teachers College. But as overpopulation made socialising more difficult, so the overpopulation of 72 Epsom Avenue would cause another issue which would itself impede socialising. 

In 1964, it was predicted that Auckland Teachers College would train 1200 students by the 1970s. Come 1970, these predictions had come to fruition and 72 Epsom Avenue’s facilities were showing their age. The issue came to a head in 1971, when the campus’ sewage system broke down and students evacuated their lectures. By consequence, a redevelopment of 72 Epsom Avenue commenced in 1972; and by 1978, the campus was unrecognisable. As part of the redevelopment, the College’s original building was demolished in 1976; marking the end of fifty years of trainees dancing through its corridors.

The College’s outdated sewage system, in the process of being renovated. The College’s original building is also visible in the background of the image on the right. From Manuka 1971.

During the period 1965 – 1986, the student community of Auckland Teachers College slowly disintegrated. As mentioned, the sheer number of trainees attending Auckland Teachers College was part of the problem. But from the 1950s onwards, those trainees were also divided between courses and subject-areas, encouraging trainees to form insular clusters. At the same time, 72 Epsom Avenue was an unpleasant environment for socialising from the mid-1960s through 1978.

The splintering of Auckland Teachers College’s student community was obvious from 1964, when the Auckland Teachers College Social Committee decided to reduce the number of social events they organised in the hopes of ensuring good attendance at a handful of high-quality events. But the Social Committee warned that “successful socials can only become a reality if you have… students interested in and prepared to assist with the work involved…” It would seem that the student community of 1965 did not rise to the occasion, as the Social Committee of 1965 was forced to report: “Our hope that fewer socials would lead to larger attendances at those held has not been born out fully, possibly because of the difficulty of communicating with the whole college.” In 1968, trainees would openly blame this breakdown in communication on the introduction of the College’s three-year course and the sheer number of trainees at 72 Epsom Avenue. In 1970, the Student Executive tried to re-establish communication with the whole College by installing a public address system and distributing a weekly news-sheet, but met with little success. 

The demise of the student community of Auckland Teachers College was also evidenced by the cancellation of social events from 1965 to 1986. As of 1968, field days, ‘college day’, and weekly assemblies ceased to be part of Auckland Teachers College’s programme. The situation worsened when in 1971, the free Wednesday afternoon for sporting and cultural activities was replaced by lectures. The few social events celebrated in the pages of Manuka or Quadwrangle from 1965 to 1986 were usually the work of small, passionate clusters of trainees. This was hilariously commented on by Quadwrangle in 1965:

“Quadwrangle wrote [Auckland Teachers College’s] obituary weeks ago. Every now and then we have to remind you that the old boy is dead. Otherwise you might be deceived by the corpse’s frequent kicks in the air.”

Quadwrangle identified the Student Executive, the Māori Club, the drama group, and the Curriculum Committee as the groups maintaining the appearance of a cohesive student community in the 1960s. But at the same time as Quadwrangle celebrated these groups, its writers decried that “many or most of the students manage to remain ignorant of College life.”

The final ‘kicks in the air’ took place between 1978 and 1983, after the renovation of 72 Epsom Avenue was completed. In 1978, the editor of Manuka eagerly anticipated “a corporate identity… beginning to emerge.” The 1980 and 1981 issues of Manuka also celebrated the re-unification of Auckland Teachers College, and the return of events which seemed to involve a significant portion of the student community. Indeed, in 1981, an Orientation week was organised and 600 students visited the Ponsonby Rugby Club to see the ‘Pink Flamingos’ play.

Hopeful scenes of life at Auckland Teachers College in 1978. From Manuka 1978.

But the social triumphs reported in the pages of 1981, such as the annual Auckland Teachers College ski trip or ‘The Great Inaugural All-time Bum-warmers, Knee-knockers, Foot-shufflers, Good Enough Celebration, seem to have been organised (and attended) primarily by a select group of passionate students. The ski trip involved a small group of  “scruffy degenerates, most of whom were masquerading as [Auckland Teachers College] students”. Suggesting that despite a “record two buses” travelling to Tongariro National Park, those buses might have been co-opted by a small group of trainees and their friends from outside the College.

The annual Auckland Teachers College ski trip to Tongariro National Park. From Manuka 1981.

Meanwhile, ‘The Great Inaugural…’ ostensibly succeeded at bringing “people forward out of the student body who had never performed in a night of entertainment before”. But again, the event seems to have only involved a passionate slice of the College community, with only 150 people in the audience. This was despite Auckland Teachers College boasting more than 1000 trainees in 1981. As with other social events, ‘The Great Inaugural’ was made memorable by a committed group of trainees. In this instance, “the Expressive Arts Group got the evening off with a hiss and a roar, as well as a touch of S & M, with a brilliant take off from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Needless to say, Auckland Teachers College and its trainees had changed since 1926.

‘The Great Inaugural…’ From Manuka 1981.

Unfortunately, ‘The Great Inaugural…’ would not save the student community of Auckland Teachers College. Come 1982, the editors of Manuka were again complaining of a lack of community spirit among trainees. The most convincing evidence of this backsliding is that when a ball was organised in 1982, only nine tickets were sold. Manuka itself struggled to publish regularly through the 1970s, and would transition to become a literary magazine in the 1980s before quietly folding in 1982. Auckland Teachers College itself ended in 1987, when the College was reintegrated with Auckland Post-primary Teachers College and the Auckland College of Education commenced operations at 72 Epsom Avenue.

Denouement

To summarise the complex story of Auckland Teachers College and its student community: Auckland Teachers College was an institution which originally intended to provide a holistic education to students, and saw socialising students as important to that goal. But over the years, Auckland Teachers College was pressured to modernise, expand, and focus on training teachers who were specialists as opposed to generalists. Initially, from 1947 to 1964, this pressure and its negative implications were not obvious to most trainees. But the political and organisational decisions made in response to this pressure resulted in trainees being siloed, and socialising becoming a secondary objective of Auckland Teachers College. At the same time, students entered into a more transactional relationship with Auckland Teachers College; they grew more concerned with qualifying themselves than broadening their horizons or socialising. Consequently, the student community of Auckland Teachers College slowly disintegrated.

My research into Auckland Teachers College relates to interesting and ongoing debates about the purpose of teacher training, and whether one-year, post-graduate training produces the best teachers possible. Several principals of Auckland Teachers College argued in the past that one-year courses were insufficient, and that since relationship-building was fundamental to teaching, it should be fundamental to teacher training. The story of Auckland Teachers College and its student community is also of general relevance to tertiary institutions and their student communities. As reported by the trainees themselves, Auckland Teachers College grew too much and too quickly, such that trainees no longer felt connected to one another, staff-members, or the College itself. The student community of Auckland Teachers College also suffered as a result of Auckland Teachers College compromising its unique objective of providing holistic, people-centered teacher training in response to outside pressures. These are lessons for other tertiary institutions to keep in mind.

In the first article in this series, I told how Auckland Teachers College moved from Wellesley Street to 72 Epsom Avenue, previously a field of volcanic rock (scoria). From 1926 through 1964, 72 Epsom Avenue would witness a continual eruption of social life. But come 1986, I would argue, all that remained of the student community of Auckland Teachers College was detritus and cooling remnants.