June 7, 2023 • 57 mins
Interviewees tell us about their upbringing, their experiences of secondary education, and the impactful influence of parents and teachers, on subject choices, and future pathways to employment.
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This podcast is only made possible thanks to the work of the Keystrokes Oral History Project, find out more at www.storycollective.nz/background
Funding support from the Public Services Commission (NZ) and the Ministry of Culture and Heritage (NZ).
Soundtrack with permission and thanks from The Boston Typewriter Orchestra, find their music on bandcamp.com
© Copyright 2017 Meg Melvin as StorycollectiveNZ
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Sound of typewriters clacking] Storycollective, untold stories by unheard voices.
Keystrokes per Minute, a limited series podcast about the women in the New Zealand Public Service Typing Pools
from 1945 to the present day. Haere mai, welcome
I'm Meg, Melvin, the presenter and producer of this podcast series.
(00:24):
I was introduced to the Keystrokes Oral History project, thanks to my mum, Lorraine also known as Rose, when
she asked me to come along to a meeting to help the team put together a newsletter, so they could locate interviewees.
Upon listening to the team talk enthusiastically about their own typing pool stories, I knew immediately
this would be a great podcast topic. The Research Team was able to interview 52 women
(00:46):
and three men between 2017 and 2021.
Their aim was to ensure that the history of women and their essential roles in the Public Service, were recorded
and archived as a way to address the lack of value accorded to this gender specific profession.
Drawing on the stories captured in those interviews episodes
(01:08):
have been themed around four main topics - The Role of Education, Life
in the Typing Pool, the Public Service and Women's Work and the Impact of Technology.
There are seven hour-long episodes and two half-hour bonus episodes in this series.
But first, let's hear from one of the members of the Research Team.
(01:32):
Tēnā kotou katoa, my name is Judith, Aitken and I initiated the Keystrokes per Minute Project
when I learned that the history of women who had worked throughout the 20th century,
and still do, as typists in Public Service typing pools, was not only virtually
hidden, but largely unrecognised and certainly not celebrated.
(01:52):
Yet without the highly skilled professional work of hundreds of women, and their ability to adapt to multiple
changes of occupational arrangements, Public Service customs and technological changes
over more than a century. Neither the Public Service, nor the Government could have functioned effectively.
The tireless, voluntary work of Maureen Goodwin Rose Melvin, Eth Lloyd, and
(02:14):
Rachel Brown have generated these interviews, and we have also benefited
from generous and encouragement from Peter Hughes of the State Services Commission, and
the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. These podcasts contribute
to the national history of New Zealand as well as the Public Service and it is
(02:35):
a tribute to the women that they gave so generously the stories of their own experiences.
And these podcasts enable them to be accessible, as they will be, in the safekeeping
of the National Library. [Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} In this Episode 1, the Role of Education, we hear from a range of interviewees about their secondary
(02:57):
schooling, who, and what influence their choice of subjects and how they were first introduced
to typing or shorthand. Shorthand is a written system that provides symbols or
abbreviations for words and common phrases, which can allow someone well trained in the system,
to write as quickly as people speak. To the uninitiated, they look like a series of
(03:17):
line strokes, dots and loops.
Mary Dooley, our oldest interviewee, tells us about how having polio affected her education,
but not her ability to learn shorthand, which she taught herself from a book.
When I was going to go to secondary school, I wanted to
(03:39):
learn French and, and do the general or professional course, but at
my interview with Sister Eugenius, who was the Commercial Teacher at
Sacred Heart College, I was advised that I would be better to go for a job
(04:01):
where I could be in a sedentary position, right, because I could had had polio.
So she advised me to take shorthand and typing. I'd never heard of shorthand,
I didn't know what it was and so I thought well I'll give it a try.
(04:24):
So when I started school, that was the first time I'd ever, you know, seen it or heard of it.
And I really enjoyed it and so the thing is that it required a good memory, to learn the rules,
and follow the rules. And so, unfortunately
(04:47):
I'd only been back at school for three weeks when I had to go into hospital for an operation
on my foot, and I was off for the whole of the first Term. So when I came
back to school in the middle term of year, they thought I'd probably
be way behind the class, but I'd learnt all the rules while I was in hospital and
(05:08):
I actually was doing my second run through the book, the Pitmans book,
because I really wanted to do School Certificate.
I took additional subjects that enabled me to
do it because it meant to say that I took Science
(05:30):
and Biology, and Commercial Practice, shorthand.
So I took School Certificate on six subjects in the end, I think they counted shorthand and typing,
in those days, only counted as one subject, but it was, you know, later it was two.
I got my School Certificate and I did my Commercial Exams.
(05:53):
And when I was I finished school at the end of the year,
when I was 16, and I turned 17 in January,
and started work the day after my 17th birthday. {Rose} Can we just go back
wee bit? You went to Sacred Heart in Lower Hutt? {Mary} Yes I had three
(06:14):
years there. {Rose} So you left with School Certificate?
Yes you couldn't do UE (University Entrance) in Commercial subjects, so that's why
I had to leave really rather than go back to school. I could have done senior shorthand typing
however, I went to night school and did that after I'd started work.
(06:41):
{Presenter} Now we hear from the Lorraine who remembers there was a shortage of Typing and Shorthand teachers
when she went to secondary school in the later 1950s. {Lorraine} I went to Wellington East Girls College and I
took up a typing course, they wanted apparently to put me in the professional course, but
my mother said no, she's got to get a job, so she insisted I go into the typing course.
(07:03):
{Judith} That's really interesting. Did you resist it at all? {Lorraine} No, because my friends were at that school too.
And I didn't really know the difference between professional, and home craft and typing.
As long as I went where my friends were. {Judith} Of course. {Lorraine} And we obeyed our mothers and those days,
like at my first interview I took Mum along, everybody did. {Judith} That's quite right, yes. Lots of other
(07:25):
people we've talked to have said exactly the same thing. So, you did the commercial course at school, what was it like?
{Lorraine} Well, because they didn't have any teachers in that year, which was 58 to 60,
we couldn't have a shorthand teacher, there was none. So we couldn't learn shorthand we could only learn typing.
Which stymied me when it came to School Certificate because it was only shorthand typing.
We had a book, they didn't, and I was near the top in History, Geography, English, Office Practice, Typing,
(07:50):
but you're only allowed four subjects. And I could, I had to choose out of History, Geography, English
and Art. That was all I had, no other choice and I can't draw to save myself.
So I failed. They got to the stage where they actually announced over Assembly 'Has anybody got a
friend, who's a secretary, who could come and teach please?' My mother determined I had to have a job
(08:12):
when I left. Yeah so before the School Certificate results came out she got me a job
at Education in the typing area. {Judith} Really? At the department or the head office?
{Lorraine} The Head Office. [Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Mina recounts for us her education experience based in Gisborne, on the east coast of New Zealand.
(08:32):
{Eth} So, when it came to starting at Secondary School,
Were you influenced in any way as to what topics you studied or did you just
have to go with whatever was offered ? {Mina} There were 3 courses,
so you had General course and the girls took sewing and cooking, and you know
(08:53):
basic stuff like that. Well I helped my mother and I was the only girl, I could cook.
I was cooking meals, I was looking after the family while Mum worked.
So I didn't need any recipes for mashed potatoes or.. [laugh] I thought that was funny,
that there was a recipe for mash potatoes. The next one was accounting, where you did accounts,
(09:17):
I know it was called commercial course and you did accounts, typing, and shorthand and stuff like that.
The third one was professional. So you did French, you did Maths, you did Science, English, Social Studies,
and that's the one I did. So I did professional course.
(09:37):
And I thoroughly enjoyed it.
{Eth} So what was the reason you chose professional?
{Mina} And I like... it gave... well I didn't want to do General or Commercial, I thought
but it gave me Maths and Science, I love those subjects.
Dad... Dad, was very... uhm had a lot of input, influence in my life.
(10:03):
So if there was anybody who influenced me, dramatically it was my father.
And my mother, but in a different sort of a way,
So Dad used to say things like 'Be careful. Look, when you go to look for a job,
look for a good job because the probability of you marrying someone from your work is very high.'
(10:26):
{Eth} Having done a professional course at High School, what sort of things did you think
you might do after high school? {Mina} I didn't know what I wanted to do,
and I look back, I wish someone, other than my father, guiding me,
but it was like, really when I look back at it, it was all about money,
(10:49):
and you know who you've got mixed up, with as opposed to 'What did you want to do?'
I wish... we did have, at Gisborne Girls, we did have a careers person,
Mrs. Jones. The only conversation that I had with Mrs Jones, which is quite interesting.
So when I finish, I finished College, Secondary School, my mother said to me
(11:12):
'Where do you want to go? Do you want to go to Auckland or Wellington?' I love Wellington.
So I chose to come back and she said, 'Well, what do you want to do?' So in those days,
girls, would sort of, sort of [be] herded towards being a teacher,
or a nurse, or some sort of a secretarial thing.
(11:33):
Or, you know, but my Mum and Dad were really good because he was no expectation that I would go off
and get married and have kids. So... Mum and I... she had a look around,
and she thought about secretarial course, and I said, 'Sure.' I didn't know what to do
so it to fill the time until I figured out what I really wanted to do.
Now, my mother was very clever, but she didn't.. she left school when she... as soon as she could,
(11:59):
as soon as she turned 15, she left. She was working. I think Mum always wanted an education,
it didn't happen. She was very clever. So she looked to me to, sort...
not fulfil her dreams, but sort of, you know, to do better than what happened to her.
And so, anyway, we applied to Wellington Polytech for secretarial course and Mrs Jones,
(12:22):
I got a call from her for me, and my mother to go and visit her.
She said to my mother to, you know, Polytech, they only took the very best,
most cleverest girls in Polytech. And so, just to be on the same, you know
that in case I didn't get in, which was probably pretty likely,
(12:43):
to look to other other things, other sources. So there was a pre-employment Māori course,
and the Department of Education used to have scholarships going,
and so I was very lucky, I got accepted. Into Polytech, and I got a scholarship.
And so I came down here and lived at the YWCA, for two years.
(13:06):
{Eth} Which is fantastic.
{Presenter} Linda remembers the setup of her 1980s typing class was set out and how she learned to touch type. The skill of not looking at the keys while typing accurately from handwritten or dictated text.
{Eth} Talk to me a bit about your secondary school, and who influenced the subjects that took.
(13:30):
{Linda} I think.. through college, you just had the standard English, Math, Science subjects
to go through, and then probably the third form...which is what year nine?
They call is now, you get introduced to typing,
{Eth} Did everybody? Or was that a choice thing?
{Linda} I think it was an option, I think it was typing or technical drawing.
(13:51):
{Eth laughs} and then there was woodwork. And and then there was home, economics, cooking
and then there was the sewing. No, no, no. I think might have been an intermediate, I can't remember.
But it was those sorts of options, they were the Practical options, so I did the typing,
and then we got introduced in the fourth form, the next year at College to shorthand
(14:14):
and then I was doing Japanese at the time, so I dropped Japanese so I could concentrate on my shorthand.
But yeah, there was a couple of us in the typing pool, typing class if you like, they were quite fast,
and I remember on the odd occasion having to, we had to have things covered over our keyboards.
{Eth} Did you? {Linda} Yeah, and I just say, go look how fast she's going, you know.
(14:38):
That was in the, you know, the type, type, type, bang, bring the carriage to the side.
And yeah. So I just love typing. When I first started doing it,
I thought this is what I want to do, remember doing the careers in Fourth Form,
and there was the secretary, there was an occupational therapist, and there was a third thing,
(14:59):
that I can't remember what it was. And then I realised the occupational therapist required a
bit much more study after school, and I wasn't interested in that.
Wasn't really very interested, yeah.
[Typewriter sounds]
{Presenter} Lorraine M talks about the education streaming that was a key part of her unique secondary school,
(15:21):
in the mid 1960s. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
I went to Waiwhetu Girls College, in Lower Hutt, it was established specifically, because the Wainuiomata
was growing and they didn't have any colleges of their own, and they used to send all the girls
(15:43):
over the hill, along with girls from Eastbourne, Days Bay, Woburn.
And we had to apply to get in because I actually grew... I was living a Naenae, I grew up in Naenae.
And because Naenae had it's own college, all my siblings went to Naenae College.
(16:04):
But I got a bee in my bonnet about, I wanted to go to Waiwhetu Girls,
So I was accepted, along, with quite a few of us actually from the Naenae area,
probably to lift their enrolment. So it was a brand new school
(16:26):
It was a state school, which was quite unusual to have a state, single-sex school. No one had really heard of it.
{Rachel} So you began in the third form? {Lorraine M} Yes. Yes.
{Rachel} So what influenced your choice of subjects? Was it a streamed school?
{Lorraine M} It was, what shocked me when I went to the school was
(16:48):
we had to sit particular tests to be streamed. And we had not been prepared for that.
I'd never been streamed, in intermediate and I was, we we're all, quite shocked
Our first week, we were sent to different classes to do different things.
(17:09):
And the hilarious thing was I obviously wanted to do Commercial,
so they sent me off to, I remember going upstairs to this classroom and we had to
do some form of shorthand strokes, so they put them up on the board,
And then we had to do these strokes of shorthand, which I had not seen before
(17:36):
and that's the only one that stuck out in my mind
about 'what was happening here?'
And I got actually streamed into the 'A' stream.
I had never been an 'A' student to that point.
I went into the professional class, first of all.
(18:01):
I was... I was allowed to do bookkeeping
in the professional class, or though that usually belong down in the Commercial class.
I have to say only lasted six months and in that stream, and they moved me back down
(18:23):
to the Commercial stream. {Rachel} At your request, or their...?
{Lorraine M} I bit of both, I was very unhappy, I was very unhappy. I was with...
{Rachel) You were struggling academically? {Lorraine M} I think so.
{Rachel} And socially? {Lorraine M} Yes, I came from Naenae, they (the other girls) came from Woburn,
(18:43):
they came from Eastbourne, and Days Bay, there were not many Wainuiomata girls in that class.
Nor was there many Naenae girls.
So it was a real... It was a real unhappy time and I think they felt it as well.
So by the second term, I went down to the 'B'... to the Commercial.
(19:07):
So then I was... {Rachel} You say you wanted to do commercial, why did you want to do commercial?
My mother... we were all raised so that we all had to have a trade,
So my oldest sibling, she became a dressmaker, my second sister in, she went hairdressing.
(19:30):
Didn't survive in that and became a retail worker.
My brother had to be a a plumber whether he liked it or not, and he hated it.
So he went plumbing and then I was the plumb of the family. I was the baby.
The rest resent me because I became a... you know, my mother wanted me to go into an office.
(19:52):
because by the time, by that time, my mother had progressed from farm work, factory work
to being in an office herself. My mother was working, she went back to work when I was eight,
she was one of the very few women in the street who was working.
And she worked her way up and she worked in the Defence building in Stout Street.
(20:19):
She wanted me to work in an office and shorthand typing was, you know, the in...
{Rachel} And what she, what was her role in Defence?
She was a clerical worker but she worked, I remember as a child, going upstairs and they were punch cards.
And her, and her friend, used to sort these punch cards, and they had this massive machine,
(20:46):
that they feed these punch cards in and I assume it printed stuff out at the bottom.
I don't know what it was. It'd be something to do with defence.
{Rachel} And your father's role in what his children were doing?
{Lorraine M} Well, my Dad was a foundry worker, so
but he was... the family was very political, so my father was a councillor,
(21:15):
on the Hutt City Council, when we were young children.
He, uhm, they waited 10 years to get the house in Naenae, so I was 18 months old,
and my sister's 10 years older than me, the oldest sister.
So we waited all, they waited all those years to get a State House. So he was a great leftie
(21:38):
in terms of people had to have housing, and jobs, and was well known in the community.
[Typewriter ding sound]
I only stayed third and fourth form. I wanted to go back to the fifth form
but I had been a difficult teenager, my first year in high school was a horrendous year,
(22:03):
for my mother, in particular. I had played up bobsy-die [fuss and trouble].
by heading into the fourth form, I was doing really well in my subjects,
and it was becoming quite fashionable, certainly if you lived in Eastbourne and Woburn,
you went back to school, right, you didn't leave in the fourth form.
(22:23):
But the Naenae girls, and the Wainui girls, the cannon fodder that went into factories,
and clerical work, left. But I wanted to go back.
One of my friends, there's four of us and we're still friends today, she went back,
and I wanted to go back but my Mother said 'No, you're going to go out now, and you're gonna get a job.'
(22:45):
So... during the school break, so we broke up end of fourth form,
she helped me apply for jobs, office junior jobs, which I did.
And I recall, I was on to my third one, didn't get the first two, because it was becoming apparent
(23:10):
even then, so you're looking at 1964 aren't you, that they sort of expected you to have School Cert,
even to be in an office. So that was the beginning of...yeah...
And the third one I went to - Hobb, Gillespie, Carter and Oakley, I blimmin' got it, the job.
(23:34):
So she was thrilled to bits. So I started there as an office junior.
And from there, I went to night school. So we went twice a week up to Wellington Polytech,
as it was in those days, to do Pitman's shorthand.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
(23:55):
{Presenter} Attending college in the 1950s, Gareth found that she loved learning shorthand and
was prepared for the workforce thanks to gaining Chamber of Commerce and Government exams
while still at school. [Typewriter ding sound]
{Eth} Which secondary school did you go to? {Gareth} I went to Wairarapa College,
Masterton, and I left there in 1957.
(24:18):
I took shorthand typing, and English, Geography and Home Science,
So, I took the Commercial course, Commercial Practice was also one of the lessons that
I never liked that much. I wasn't very good at math, but I did like...short hand, 270 00:24:441,000 --> 00:24:45,088 and yes, that was something that stayed with me all my life, really.
(24:45):
{Eth} What made you choose to do the commercial course? {Gareth} Well, it was either professional
or Commercial, or Home Science. And so, I think.. well I was ever going to be a teacher, or a professional.
So although I was a professional in what I did do. And so I chose shorthand typing,
(25:10):
and it was just the right thing for me. So did love it.
[Eth} Were there any expectations from your family as to what you would do, or did you have a free choice?
{Gareth} No, as long as we... I had a free choice so Wairarapa College was good education,
but good basic education. Yeah, other schools like Solway...St Matthews,
(25:39):
some of the students will have to come to Wairarapa College, to do some of the lessons.
I mean, we had everything there, I was very happy at college, and all my schooling really.
{Eth} And how long did you stay in secondary school?
{Gareth} Three years, I left when I was 16.
{Eth} Okay, and did you leave with any particular qualifications? And I don't just mean a diploma but in your commercial course?
(26:07):
Yes, I had my certificates. At school I did Chamber of Commerce exams. I've got here... Shorthand 110 words per minute.
And typing, Intermediate Typing Senior. So the marks I got, percentage mark
(26:28):
was 75% for shorthand and 93% for intermediate typing.
and 54 for Typing Senior, which was above my station really, because I also just learning.
And then I had my Government exam, I think this is the one that was the main thing for me,
(26:49):
which was Shorthand Typing and English.
I didn't sit School Cert because that year my father died... he died on my 16th birthday.
So we had quite a horrific time and I thought, well, you know, really I have got the marks,
So I wanted to be a shorthand typist, so that's what I became.
(27:10):
And once I had my certificate, well, I belonged to the Government really,
and I was placed at Child Welfare.
[Sound of typewriters]
{Presenter} Not an unusual occurrence in that era, Carolyn tells us about her mother attending her first job interview, in 1966.
(27:33):
And then how she ended up going to a business college to gain her typing and shorthand qualifications. [Typewriter ding]
{Eth} Tell us a little bit about the interview. Did your mother contribute or is she just a bystander?
No, Mum contributed, quite energetically, because I was just too shy to say anything about myself.
(27:54):
Ah, this was totally outside anything that I had ever experienced.
We were not prepared at school, for these type of things.
I had spent a year going to Gilbey's private business college.
At college, we had not been considered well-behaved
(28:15):
in our fourth form year, and the Headmistress decided to make our class,
a 4-year School Cert class, and out of the class of 30 odd girls, only one stayed on to do the School C[ertificate].
(28:37):
The rest of us left at the end of that year, and to compensate for the fact I wasn't going to get the level
of skill I needed, we, Mum sent me to the Business College,
and in actual fact, my grandmother had been a teacher at.
(28:57):
And that was valuable, at the end of that third year at College, I topped both shorthand and typing.
Not because I was anything brilliant, but because I had done all this extra work.
Four nights a week I went, and it set me on a path. That was my mother's suggestion,
(29:22):
I started college at 12 and I was expected to know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, at 12,
and I had no idea. And Mum said, 'Well, if you do go into the business classes, if you go and do those ones,
it'll stand your shorthand and typing stand you in good stead for the rest of your life,
(29:46):
no matter what you decide to do, and she was right.
{Eth} Mmm. {Carolyn} I've made a career out of that, and proud of my career.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Tungane came to New Zealand from the Cook Islands in 1968 to finish her secondary schooling
at Wellington Girls College. {Tungane} I'm from the Cook Islands, my father and mother.
(30:09):
My mom is half European and I was brought up there and I went to school in the Cook Islands.
I learned to speak English at school, that was our main language.
{Judith} Which part of the Cook Islands? {Tungane} In Rarotonga, but I'm actually from Aitutaki,
one of the small islands. Beautiful lagoon and all that. And my father was a teacher,
and we were moving all the time, and I went to school there.
(30:32):
And then we moved to Aitutaki, where I grew up there as well.
Went to school, went as far as college, Araura College, and then I got to go to Rarotonga
for the higher education in the college and that's where I finished,
(30:54):
well I didn't finish my schooling there. My father sent me to New Zealand
because he came to New Zealand as well and went to school here.
I'm not sure I've forgotten what college, and then that's he did to all his siblings,
my brother and sisters before me, they came here as well.
They're both teachers. And then he decided he wanted.. I was halfway through my college he said, 'Oh you're
(31:22):
going to New Zealand!' So it was challenging, you just go into the unknown.
{Judith} Were you happy about that?
{Tungane} Well, I was about 15 or 16 but I just went along with what I was told to do.
So I came with my sister and then I went to Wellington Girls College from 1968
(31:44):
to 1970. When I left school I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.
{Judith} What subjects did you take at school?
{Tungane} Well, I took a sewing, history, uhm...
[paper rustling sound] and uhm,
(32:05):
{Judith} Did you have any typing at school? {Tungane} Oh yes, yes, commercial, yes, I did, I did typing class at school
{Judith} What decided you to take that particular option? {Tungane} Well, it wasn't an option,
we had to do these subjects, so I ended up in the typing pool, our teacher was Miss Devlin.
She was a very strict teacher and... which was good for us.
(32:28):
We would have our bib, you know how you tied on to the [typewriter] and then on to your napkin,
If you... and she would come with a stick and hit your hand! {Judith} Did she?! {Tungane} Yes, she would!
If you cheated, so that went on. And then when it was time for me to leave school,
{Judith} Can I ask you if you learned shorthand at the same time? {Tungane} No.
(32:50):
{Judith} So not at school, you did typing. {Tungane} I did typing. {Judith} And what other parts
of any commercial course? Would you have done it any bookkeeping or anything?
{Tungane} No, I don't believe... {Judith} So it was one subject along with some of the other general... English, History,
Mathematics.{Tungane} So because I did typing and my sister.. or teacher, but I had no idea
what I was going to do. But then my sister had a friend, that worked in a typing pool.
(33:13):
Her name was Margaret, she said, 'Oh, go and see Margaret.'
So I went to her and then she employed me. {Judith} And where as that?
That was in Wellington and I worked at the Wellington Post Office Headquarters. {Judith} In Herd Street? {Tungane} Yes,
the main one, yeah, yeah. I worked there and I started off as a typist,
(33:36):
{Judith} So by this time you had School Certificate? {Tungane} I sat School Certificate but I wasn't successful.
I didn't pass the any, any of those. {Judith} It was very hard, it was pass fail, there was no middle ground.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Louise found that moving from a small country town to attend a large college in Wellington,
was something of an abrupt change that she wasn't expecting. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
(34:00):
{Judith} Anyway you had 1 term... {Louise} I had 1 term at Otaki College.. {Judith} You had a good typing teacher?
{Louise} Good teacher, Miss Kelly, she was very good teacher. {Judith} Tell me what you could do by the end of the first term?
By the end of the first term, you knew all your QWERTY, all your letters, all your alpha.
Right through, you could touch type, the whole, the whole alphabetic keyboard no trouble at all.
{Judith} Did you have short carriage or long carriage? {Louise} Long carriage, in those... yeah in those days, the old Imperial.
(34:26):
Imperial typewriter as they were. I think it was a long Carriage, it was quite a long time, to go back and that sort of jazz.
And, and at that stage, when I left, when we left Otaki College, I was one of the lower ones in the class.
I think there was probably about 16 or 17 of us in the typing class. I was one of the lower ones in the class...
{Judith} All girls? {Louise} All girls in the typing class yeah. And went down to Petone Tech which was known as
(34:51):
Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College and I wondered what I'd struck.
I have never seen such a disruptive mad house in all my life, could not believe what I struck.
Coming from a country town and being taught by the nuns, who were very strict.
Even though the boys to get up to mischief in the last couple years, they were still pretty strictly run.
(35:14):
And then Otaki College was pretty strict too, and then you went down to Petone 385 00:35:19000 --> 00:35:26,088 and it was just a mad house and I started off, I was in the commercial type class there,
in the first term, when I was there, I did shorthand and typing.
But I didn't carry on with the shorthand because I didn't pick it up very well
(35:35):
and I think probably having missed that first term, that was probably where the initial grounding of it was.
And you trying to play catch up [Typewriter ding sound} My typing was the top of the class.
{Judith} Top of the class when you went to Hutt Valley Memorial? {Louise} Yep, top of the class. [Sound of Typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Nicky wanted to be a seamstress but her skill as a typist meant she was in demand and was able to
(37:55):
pick her first Government job. A note for listeners, we apologise for the poor quality of this recording.
{Nicky} Okay, when I first joined the college and you had your main core subjects, but I was interested in
Art and typing were the other subjects that we could choose or Māori.
But in the third form, I had to take Art first but from the fifth form it was it was compulsory.
that we learn Māori. So that was my interest in typing because I used to watch the typing teacher
through the window typing on the old Olympia, and all the old Adlers, and I thought well
if she can do that, I can do that, so I took up typing as something that I knew I wanted to do.
When I initially came down here, I wasn't interested in typing.
I wanted to be a seamstress because I did a lot of sewing.
So that wasn't my interest to be in the typing pool, it was just when my CV was handed in
and they'd seen I'd done five years, experience in typing, and I could touch type, they asked
if I was interested in being a typist and then I went from there.
But the job was fun. Something totally different, my other job I had applied for was the Government Printing
in the old days? I went to the factory and I thought I'm not interested, it was too noisy for me.
I couldn't hear anything. It was just noise. So my interest wasn't in there and they offered me a job
there and I said 'No I can do better.' So it was more getting into the Government.
That was my goal. What our careers advisor said get into a Government and
You should be sweet, you know you'll have a good job in the Government
and that was what was put across us back in those days. Don't go anywhere else but the Government.
[Sound of typewriters clacking] 00:37:40,088 --> 00:37:45,088 {Presenter} Our next interviewee was unique as a typist, in being both Māori and male.
In this clip, Friday talks about how he wasn't the only boy who was taught typing at his Northland College. [Typewriter ding sound]
[Friday] Started at at Hillary College in 1983 and finished at the end of my sixth form year in 1986.
While I was there it was.. interesting, I, in terms of the subjects I did,
was all your standard ones, English, Maths, Māori, or the Sciences,
(38:22):
but in Form 3, we were given the option of doing six months of typing, and
Yeah so, {Judith} Really? In the third form? {Friday} In the third form. {Judith} How interesting.
{Friday} In the third form, we were all given the option to to do typing and another subject as well.
And then for the other six months was actually tech drawing and woodwork.
(38:47):
And I suppose it was the first notion there... dream of typing. {Judith} Keyboard skills, so early. {Friday} Yep.
{Judith} Did you have to have a typewriter with an apron on it? {Friday} It was. {Judith} Was it?
{Friday} We had a fantastic teacher, typing teacher. {Judith} Do you remember the teacher's name?
{Friday} No but if I saw her, I'd recognise her. {Judith} And how many other boys took typing?
(39:14):
{Friday} It was half and half. {Judith} Isn't that fascinating? {Friday} Actually we had to do it, to be honest.
I suppose there was a start of me actually having the first notion around typing.
Then what I got into the fourth form there was when I started choosing my subjects and I thought well
(39:34):
typing was, I think was a good subject. I was actually quite good at in Form 3
so I picked it up then. And so throughout the fourth form I think I did all the, uhm, core subjects.
And then it was when I started doing the Pitman's exams. {Judith} Oh did you?
(39:58):
{Judith} In the fourth form? {Friday} yeah, yeah.
{Judith} You were young to do that. Did you go out of the school to do that?
{Friday} No, no, we did them in school.
So you must have had a very forward thinking teacher. {Friday} Teacher, yeah, absolutely.
I can see her right now, she was so prim and proper [Laughter]
She treated everyone exactly the same. {Judith} Yeah. {Friday} Exactly the same.
(40:20):
Yeah so that was throughout the fourth form year, and then coming to the fifth form year,
I thought well, think I'll... {Judith} I'm good at this. {Friday} I am good at this so I'll just carry on.
Yeah so fifth form I started doing the the trade certificate exams. I started off with one and two, which I passed.
(40:43):
That was in my fifth form year, and then coming up to (19)86, when I moved into sixth form year,
I decide to take up shorthand as well. {Judith} Did you? Learn another language. {Friday} Well, basically.
And then there was actually during that year that I managed to get TCB Level 3 as well. {Judith} Fantastic.
(41:07):
Yeah so.. {Judith} So you got your qualifications in school?
{Friday} In school. [Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Many interviewees had stories of disrupted and interrupted education experiences.
Here Barbara talks about how her pathway to the typing pool was really due to a lack of access to her preferred accounting course. [Typewriter ding sound]
{Barbara} I originally was going to be an accountant because I thoroughly enjoyed accounting, but I would have had to go,
(41:35):
by that time, Petone Tech had started up again for girls, I was supposed to go Petone Tech
because my Dad was head prefect at Petone Tech many years ago.
So that was my path but it never never occurred because it was closed to girls
at that stage, when I started College.
And then it opened up again. {Judith} Closed to girls? {Barbara} Yes, it was for a period
(42:01):
while they were doing a big, a lot of building program. And so at that time, Waiwhetu Girls
was opened and then they started back again after I... it was the year I left College,
that they started going, opening up to girls again.
I would have had, because there was no bookkeeping at Waiwhetu Girls I would have had to
(42:22):
go to change schools and I thought 'No' and, because I got good marks
in all my shorthand stuff. I went to that path but I thought, well, I'll go to night school
and I'll get more shorthand exams, but if there is a bookkeeping job comes up,
I'll take it. But I never did. [Sound of typewriters clacking]
(42:44):
{Presenter} Leaving her small home town of Motueka in 1975, Rosemary attended Secretarial school in Nelson,
where she was taught other useful skills, as well as typing and shorthand. [Typewriter ding sound]
{Rosemary} I was born in Motueka in 1958 and went to Parklands Primary School
and then onto Motueka High School where I went through to my sixth form year.
(43:05):
With no idea what I wanted to do when I left school. I was walking passed the Assembly Hall
one day at school and I saw they had a Careers expo. Which, first I knew of it
was when I walked past it, and the Nelson Polytech as it was known then, had to stand there.
So, I went and had a look, and they were offering a Secretarial course. So I though uuuh, yeah,
(43:29):
I'll do that. So, I applied for the secretarial course, that would have been 1975 and was successful.
So I actually came to to NMIT, the polytech was what it was called in those days,
And did the Secretarial course in 1975.
And that was prior to this whole campus being built, we were in a little old house on Hardy Street.
(43:52):
I think there were three class intakes that year, I was on the top class,
and I excelled, which surprised me because up until then I hadn't excelled at much!
{Judith} So tell me what you had done at school? {Rosemary} Well at school. I did,
I studied, you know, the core subjects but I did French, and I did Art, there was nothing that really grabbed me
(44:17):
and was thinking.. {Judith} Was there commercial, were you streamed in any way?
We were streamed and I was in the highest, the second highest stream. Not quite sure how I got there.
I think it must have been because I was good at English. I did Accounting, French, Art,
so not commercial, not domestic as it was called then it was probably, I don't know...
(44:41):
{Judith} So there were 3, because there was professional academic, commercial usually and then there was home ec(onomics)
{Rosemary} Would have been professional. Yes it was.
{Judith} And School Cert, you done School Cert?
{Rosemary} Done School Cert, passed School Cert, did UE (University Entrance), I think I passed two subjects,
in UE. Boarded here in Nelson. It was the first time I've been away from home,
(45:05):
and I think I was quite a young... young for my age,
missed my family terribly. Used to go back to Motueka every weekend,
which was... {Judtih} A week boarder? {Rosemary} A week border, so it was..
a nice entry. {Judith} Homesick? {Rosemary} I was home sick. bordered with another girl from Motueka.
Which was good fun. Secretarial course we did shorthand and typing,
(45:29):
and other essential things like how to put on makeup.
{Judith} Oh did you! {Rosemary} We did! We had people come in and teach us how apply makeup.
{Judith} Really? This was 1975? [Indistinguishable talking]
{Rosemary} Well there you go, maybe it was a prerequisite, I don't know.
(45:49):
We learned flower arranging. Yeah. {Judith} The total secretary!
{Rosemary} The Total Secretary, how to arrange flowers, how to put on your makeup.
A bit of accounting, which I found really interesting. But the main focus was the
shorthand and typing of course. {Judith} And did you like shorthand? {Rosemary} I loved it, absolutely loved it.
(46:10):
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Lynn has always known she wanted to be a typist but found some resistance from the Deputy Principal
at Secondary School, about her choice of career. [Typewriter return carriage sound]
{Lynn} I was born in Masterton and I went to primary school at Lansdowne School
(46:30):
and then I went on to Makora College, which is where I first began my typing classes.
{Judith} And why did you take typing classes?
{Lynn} When I was four, I had a neighbour that lived over the road called Louise,
and she was a Secretary, she worked for an office in Masterton.
(46:53):
and she had her typewriter at home one weekend and I was fascinated.
I used to watch her typing, was an old black Imperial typewriter. And she uhm,
helped me to use the keyboard. {Judith} You were four? {Lynn} Yeah. And I typed a letter
that said when I grow up, I'm going to be a typist like Louise. {Judith} Did you keep the letter?
(47:14):
{Lynn} I did keep the letter. I kept it for a long time. I remember it was on quite wafer thin paper,
and it was in an envelope that Louise had put it in, and I used to look at from time to time.
And then when I was about 12, my Dad came home one day with a Herme's typewriter.
(47:36):
that he got second hand and so my parents bought me a 'Learn how to type' book
and I spent two years teaching myself the keyboard and then when I got to college, 518 00:47:450,060 --> 00:47:53,000 I actually could touch type when I first took the typing class.
{Judith} I've never heard before someone whose career began when they were four.
(47:57):
[Laughter] {Lynn} Yes, we, I never changed my mind.
I uhm, I did quite well at school. And I had a quite a stern old Deputy Principal,
and when I was in the sixth form or about to go into the sixth form,
she called me into her office and she said that I was wasting my life wanting to become a typist,
(48:19):
and that I should be going to University. And I went home and talked to my parents
and they said, but you're a young woman you should either be a typist, a nurse or a teacher
and, you know, if you go to University, you got to move away from Masterton into the big world.
And you'll probably get married soon and have children and so, you know, what a waste that would be. [Laughter]
(48:43):
{Judith} Classic isn't it?
{Lynn} And so I went back to school and this Deputy Head Teacher was not happy,
but I enrolled in typing and shorthand and continued those.
{Judith} How short-sighted of her? {Lynn} Yeah... And I did, there's been lots of times in my life
when I regretted not going to University and I think working in a university environment,
(49:07):
you see what could have been. And so, one year I actually did a Management paper
because I just needed to prove to myself that I could have done it, if I'd wanted to do it.
And I got an 'A' mark so I was really thrilled with that.
{Judith} If you had, if you had decided to go to university, what would you have done?
(49:29):
{Lynn} I think I would have liked to be a social worker.
{Judith} Do you? {Lynn} Yeah, yeah. {Judith} Well I guess, in lots of ways, your life probably has had a lot of social work involved.
{Lynn} Yeah I think as a PA or EA you kind of are, in that service kind of role. {Judith} Absolutely, looking after people.
{Lynn} Yeah, yes I think by the time I left school there was only seven people went through to the seventh form.
(49:55):
And there was probably only a couple of girls and one of those I think went on to be a District Court Judge.
{Judith} Really is that, right? {Lynn} But you had to be incredibly brainy,
I mean, I think only back then, only about five percent of people went University.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Debbie tells us about how she came to take the commercial stream at her secondary school,
(50:17):
and how influential her mother was in that decision. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
{Debbie} Interesting because in those days you had a choice between General and Commercial
and no, I didn't really have a choice. You arrived, you did General for Form 3
which now is Year 9. I did everything that other kids did, you know,
(50:42):
I had to learn French or the bits and pieces and then when it got to fourth form,
I got told that I was doing commercial because I was told I wasn't bright enough to go and do the General.
And so that's how I got into commercial practice, shorthand typing. All the generic things that, you know,
(51:04):
it was a choice, what were you going to do? Where you're going to be a teacher? A secretary or a nurse.
And so, I got told that's what I was doing. So I ended up doing the Commercial course with shorthand typing.
{Eth} So, who told you? {Lynn} My mother.
{Eth} So your mother had looked at your results or had she predetermined?
(51:26):
{Lynn} I think she looked at my results. Looking, looking back on things, I was actually a very young, a young 13 year old.
When I started at st. Mary's, possibly I should have been kept back a year but I was a young naive, wasn't a fast learner.
(51:47):
It was only as I got older that it sort of came about. But I think they sort of felt that that's... and Mum,
both my parents, actually Mum never got to finish college. So Mum got to do one year of St. Mary's and her father died,
when she was 14, and she ran the shop. Dad's father died when he was about 12.
(52:11):
And so he never even got to college, he was left to run the farm.
So I think what they thought was, if we could give a good start you know, secretarial would be the way to go.
get me in an office, wouldn't have been on the shop floor.
And so that was what was agreed. [Typewriter ding sound]
Finished in 77, Mum and Dad said, 'No, you're not staying on for sixth form' and I did a six month course
(52:37):
at Petone Polytech, where they had a thing called Administrative Practice.
And so I did all my Pitman's and my TCB Board and everything there.
And I did six months and then went job hunting.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} To help us understand how education policy was designed in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
(53:01):
I'm pleased to welcome, Sarah Christie, a Researcher, to the podcast.
Sarah is a PhD candidate with the Department of History at the University of Otago
and submitted her thesis in September 2021 titled 'Women and the New Zealand office 1945 to 1972'.
So Sarah, can you tell us a bit more about what was the spark for you, to want to write your thesis on women and office work?
(53:28):
{Sarah} Hello, thank you very much. I was wanting to do some further study. I'd been working in the University
in a clerical and administration role and wanted to go back and do some more history work.
And in trying to figure out what their topic would be, I wanted it to be something in the area of women and work.
(53:49):
And I was looking through the archives and finding all these beautifully typed pages of letters and minutes,
all without any mistakes. And I just thought nobody ever tells the story
of who actually created these documents and so that was really the spark that led me down to think,
okay what were, what was the role that women were playing in the office in this post war period.
(54:13):
[Typewriter carriage return sound]
What I found really interesting was how the education, and entry into the workforce, in those post-war years, in the 1950
through to the 1970s, was really impacted by the ideas and reforms that were undertaken prior to that in the 1930s and 1940s.
So, under the first Labour Government, the key shift for young woman was really around extending secondary education access,
(54:38):
from an idea that secondary education was for a minority based on exam that children
actually sat at the end of their primary schooling, to a model where secondary schooling was compulsory up to the age of 14.
So effectively, two years of free and compulsory secondary education.
Under the selection model secondary schools had been primarily academic but if everyone was now going to secondary school,
(55:03):
there was then a debate around 'What should the curriculum look like?'
And this debate was in the context of a country that have been through the Depression was currently in the midst of the second world war.
And so it focused a lot around citizenship, and what made a good citizen, and for Labour and the educationalists
that worked on this, the answer was really a student had a core academic education.
(55:27):
So Reading, Writing, Maths, rounded out with Music and Art and Physical Education.
And then the option to train towards the job that would suit their abilities and characteristics.
These reforms really allowed a great number, and a more diverse number, of women access to the education
that allowed them to become office workers.
(55:49):
But is also a flip side to that, the idealised version was, had a significant amount of student choice
but the implementation of that was underpinned by assumptions that, about women's role in the workplace,
and in the home. And the assumption that this was temporary for women. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
(56:10):
The School Certificate qualification was introduced in 1946. And at the start,
the subjects were supposed to be driven by their interests and their abilities.
But the implementation realities meant that the old distinctions between academic and vocational
ended up being reinforced. This was especially true in the post war years within the baby boom generation
(56:32):
hit the high schools, and there was not the resources to be individualistic, and the idea of those streams
that we hear the women talk about kind of just got reinforced and entrenched.
Those areas we hear, which was Home Craft, Commercial and then the Professional and Academic.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Ngā mihi nui, a big thank you to all the interviewees who shared the education experiences
(56:57):
and memories with us for episode 1. And to Sarah Christie, for her insights.
Coming up in episode 2, the Role of Education, Part 2, we hear from more interviewees about the challenges and
bias they faced in gaining an education, and how parents, teachers, and society, viewed their potential. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
The Keystrokes per Minute project was made possible by funding support from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage
(57:21):
and the Public Services Commission. Listeners can find out more about the project by visiting website
www.storycollective.nz. The soundtrack was kindly provided by permission
from the Boston Typewriter Orchestra.
Find their music and merchandise on Bandcamp.com. Thanks for listening. [Typewriter ding sound]
[Sound of typewriters clacking] Storycollective, untold stories by unheard voices.
Keystrokes per Minute, a limited series podcast about the women in the New Zealand Public Service Typing Pools
from 1945 to the present day. Haere mai, welcome
I'm Meg, Melvin, the presenter and producer of this podcast series.
(00:24):
I was introduced to the Keystrokes Oral History project, thanks to my mum, Lorraine also known as Rose, when
she asked me to come along to a meeting to help the team put together a newsletter, so they could locate interviewees.
Upon listening to the team talk enthusiastically about their own typing pool stories, I knew immediately
this would be a great podcast topic. The Research Team was able to interview 52 women
(00:46):
and three men between 2017 and 2021.
Their aim was to ensure that the history of women and their essential roles in the Public Service, were recorded
and archived as a way to address the lack of value accorded to this gender specific profession.
Drawing on the stories captured in those interviews episodes
(01:08):
have been themed around four main topics - The Role of Education, Life
in the Typing Pool, the Public Service and Women's Work and the Impact of Technology.
There are seven hour-long episodes and two half-hour bonus episodes in this series.
But first, let's hear from one of the members of the Research Team.
(01:32):
Tēnā kotou katoa, my name is Judith, Aitken and I initiated the Keystrokes per Minute Project
when I learned that the history of women who had worked throughout the 20th century,
and still do, as typists in Public Service typing pools, was not only virtually
hidden, but largely unrecognised and certainly not celebrated.
(01:52):
Yet without the highly skilled professional work of hundreds of women, and their ability to adapt to multiple
changes of occupational arrangements, Public Service customs and technological changes
over more than a century. Neither the Public Service, nor the Government could have functioned effectively.
The tireless, voluntary work of Maureen Goodwin Rose Melvin, Eth Lloyd, and
(02:14):
Rachel Brown have generated these interviews, and we have also benefited
from generous and encouragement from Peter Hughes of the State Services Commission, and
the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. These podcasts contribute
to the national history of New Zealand as well as the Public Service and it is
(02:35):
a tribute to the women that they gave so generously the stories of their own experiences.
And these podcasts enable them to be accessible, as they will be, in the safekeeping
of the National Library. [Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} In this Episode 1, the Role of Education, we hear from a range of interviewees about their secondary
(02:57):
schooling, who, and what influence their choice of subjects and how they were first introduced
to typing or shorthand. Shorthand is a written system that provides symbols or
abbreviations for words and common phrases, which can allow someone well trained in the system,
to write as quickly as people speak. To the uninitiated, they look like a series of
(03:17):
line strokes, dots and loops.
Mary Dooley, our oldest interviewee, tells us about how having polio affected her education,
but not her ability to learn shorthand, which she taught herself from a book.
When I was going to go to secondary school, I wanted to
(03:39):
learn French and, and do the general or professional course, but at
my interview with Sister Eugenius, who was the Commercial Teacher at
Sacred Heart College, I was advised that I would be better to go for a job
(04:01):
where I could be in a sedentary position, right, because I could had had polio.
So she advised me to take shorthand and typing. I'd never heard of shorthand,
I didn't know what it was and so I thought well I'll give it a try.
(04:24):
So when I started school, that was the first time I'd ever, you know, seen it or heard of it.
And I really enjoyed it and so the thing is that it required a good memory, to learn the rules,
and follow the rules. And so, unfortunately
(04:47):
I'd only been back at school for three weeks when I had to go into hospital for an operation
on my foot, and I was off for the whole of the first Term. So when I came
back to school in the middle term of year, they thought I'd probably
be way behind the class, but I'd learnt all the rules while I was in hospital and
(05:08):
I actually was doing my second run through the book, the Pitmans book,
because I really wanted to do School Certificate.
I took additional subjects that enabled me to
do it because it meant to say that I took Science
(05:30):
and Biology, and Commercial Practice, shorthand.
So I took School Certificate on six subjects in the end, I think they counted shorthand and typing,
in those days, only counted as one subject, but it was, you know, later it was two.
I got my School Certificate and I did my Commercial Exams.
(05:53):
And when I was I finished school at the end of the year,
when I was 16, and I turned 17 in January,
and started work the day after my 17th birthday. {Rose} Can we just go back
wee bit? You went to Sacred Heart in Lower Hutt? {Mary} Yes I had three
(06:14):
years there. {Rose} So you left with School Certificate?
Yes you couldn't do UE (University Entrance) in Commercial subjects, so that's why
I had to leave really rather than go back to school. I could have done senior shorthand typing
however, I went to night school and did that after I'd started work.
(06:41):
{Presenter} Now we hear from the Lorraine who remembers there was a shortage of Typing and Shorthand teachers
when she went to secondary school in the later 1950s. {Lorraine} I went to Wellington East Girls College and I
took up a typing course, they wanted apparently to put me in the professional course, but
my mother said no, she's got to get a job, so she insisted I go into the typing course.
(07:03):
{Judith} That's really interesting. Did you resist it at all? {Lorraine} No, because my friends were at that school too.
And I didn't really know the difference between professional, and home craft and typing.
As long as I went where my friends were. {Judith} Of course. {Lorraine} And we obeyed our mothers and those days,
like at my first interview I took Mum along, everybody did. {Judith} That's quite right, yes. Lots of other
(07:25):
people we've talked to have said exactly the same thing. So, you did the commercial course at school, what was it like?
{Lorraine} Well, because they didn't have any teachers in that year, which was 58 to 60,
we couldn't have a shorthand teacher, there was none. So we couldn't learn shorthand we could only learn typing.
Which stymied me when it came to School Certificate because it was only shorthand typing.
We had a book, they didn't, and I was near the top in History, Geography, English, Office Practice, Typing,
(07:50):
but you're only allowed four subjects. And I could, I had to choose out of History, Geography, English
and Art. That was all I had, no other choice and I can't draw to save myself.
So I failed. They got to the stage where they actually announced over Assembly 'Has anybody got a
friend, who's a secretary, who could come and teach please?' My mother determined I had to have a job
(08:12):
when I left. Yeah so before the School Certificate results came out she got me a job
at Education in the typing area. {Judith} Really? At the department or the head office?
{Lorraine} The Head Office. [Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Mina recounts for us her education experience based in Gisborne, on the east coast of New Zealand.
(08:32):
{Eth} So, when it came to starting at Secondary School,
Were you influenced in any way as to what topics you studied or did you just
have to go with whatever was offered ? {Mina} There were 3 courses,
so you had General course and the girls took sewing and cooking, and you know
(08:53):
basic stuff like that. Well I helped my mother and I was the only girl, I could cook.
I was cooking meals, I was looking after the family while Mum worked.
So I didn't need any recipes for mashed potatoes or.. [laugh] I thought that was funny,
that there was a recipe for mash potatoes. The next one was accounting, where you did accounts,
(09:17):
I know it was called commercial course and you did accounts, typing, and shorthand and stuff like that.
The third one was professional. So you did French, you did Maths, you did Science, English, Social Studies,
and that's the one I did. So I did professional course.
(09:37):
And I thoroughly enjoyed it.
{Eth} So what was the reason you chose professional?
{Mina} And I like... it gave... well I didn't want to do General or Commercial, I thought
but it gave me Maths and Science, I love those subjects.
Dad... Dad, was very... uhm had a lot of input, influence in my life.
(10:03):
So if there was anybody who influenced me, dramatically it was my father.
And my mother, but in a different sort of a way,
So Dad used to say things like 'Be careful. Look, when you go to look for a job,
look for a good job because the probability of you marrying someone from your work is very high.'
(10:26):
{Eth} Having done a professional course at High School, what sort of things did you think
you might do after high school? {Mina} I didn't know what I wanted to do,
and I look back, I wish someone, other than my father, guiding me,
but it was like, really when I look back at it, it was all about money,
(10:49):
and you know who you've got mixed up, with as opposed to 'What did you want to do?'
I wish... we did have, at Gisborne Girls, we did have a careers person,
Mrs. Jones. The only conversation that I had with Mrs Jones, which is quite interesting.
So when I finish, I finished College, Secondary School, my mother said to me
(11:12):
'Where do you want to go? Do you want to go to Auckland or Wellington?' I love Wellington.
So I chose to come back and she said, 'Well, what do you want to do?' So in those days,
girls, would sort of, sort of [be] herded towards being a teacher,
or a nurse, or some sort of a secretarial thing.
(11:33):
Or, you know, but my Mum and Dad were really good because he was no expectation that I would go off
and get married and have kids. So... Mum and I... she had a look around,
and she thought about secretarial course, and I said, 'Sure.' I didn't know what to do
so it to fill the time until I figured out what I really wanted to do.
Now, my mother was very clever, but she didn't.. she left school when she... as soon as she could,
(11:59):
as soon as she turned 15, she left. She was working. I think Mum always wanted an education,
it didn't happen. She was very clever. So she looked to me to, sort...
not fulfil her dreams, but sort of, you know, to do better than what happened to her.
And so, anyway, we applied to Wellington Polytech for secretarial course and Mrs Jones,
(12:22):
I got a call from her for me, and my mother to go and visit her.
She said to my mother to, you know, Polytech, they only took the very best,
most cleverest girls in Polytech. And so, just to be on the same, you know
that in case I didn't get in, which was probably pretty likely,
(12:43):
to look to other other things, other sources. So there was a pre-employment Māori course,
and the Department of Education used to have scholarships going,
and so I was very lucky, I got accepted. Into Polytech, and I got a scholarship.
And so I came down here and lived at the YWCA, for two years.
(13:06):
{Eth} Which is fantastic.
{Presenter} Linda remembers the setup of her 1980s typing class was set out and how she learned to touch type. The skill of not looking at the keys while typing accurately from handwritten or dictated text.
{Eth} Talk to me a bit about your secondary school, and who influenced the subjects that took.
(13:30):
{Linda} I think.. through college, you just had the standard English, Math, Science subjects
to go through, and then probably the third form...which is what year nine?
They call is now, you get introduced to typing,
{Eth} Did everybody? Or was that a choice thing?
{Linda} I think it was an option, I think it was typing or technical drawing.
(13:51):
{Eth laughs} and then there was woodwork. And and then there was home, economics, cooking
and then there was the sewing. No, no, no. I think might have been an intermediate, I can't remember.
But it was those sorts of options, they were the Practical options, so I did the typing,
and then we got introduced in the fourth form, the next year at College to shorthand
(14:14):
and then I was doing Japanese at the time, so I dropped Japanese so I could concentrate on my shorthand.
But yeah, there was a couple of us in the typing pool, typing class if you like, they were quite fast,
and I remember on the odd occasion having to, we had to have things covered over our keyboards.
{Eth} Did you? {Linda} Yeah, and I just say, go look how fast she's going, you know.
(14:38):
That was in the, you know, the type, type, type, bang, bring the carriage to the side.
And yeah. So I just love typing. When I first started doing it,
I thought this is what I want to do, remember doing the careers in Fourth Form,
and there was the secretary, there was an occupational therapist, and there was a third thing,
(14:59):
that I can't remember what it was. And then I realised the occupational therapist required a
bit much more study after school, and I wasn't interested in that.
Wasn't really very interested, yeah.
[Typewriter sounds]
{Presenter} Lorraine M talks about the education streaming that was a key part of her unique secondary school,
(15:21):
in the mid 1960s. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
I went to Waiwhetu Girls College, in Lower Hutt, it was established specifically, because the Wainuiomata
was growing and they didn't have any colleges of their own, and they used to send all the girls
(15:43):
over the hill, along with girls from Eastbourne, Days Bay, Woburn.
And we had to apply to get in because I actually grew... I was living a Naenae, I grew up in Naenae.
And because Naenae had it's own college, all my siblings went to Naenae College.
(16:04):
But I got a bee in my bonnet about, I wanted to go to Waiwhetu Girls,
So I was accepted, along, with quite a few of us actually from the Naenae area,
probably to lift their enrolment. So it was a brand new school
(16:26):
It was a state school, which was quite unusual to have a state, single-sex school. No one had really heard of it.
{Rachel} So you began in the third form? {Lorraine M} Yes. Yes.
{Rachel} So what influenced your choice of subjects? Was it a streamed school?
{Lorraine M} It was, what shocked me when I went to the school was
(16:48):
we had to sit particular tests to be streamed. And we had not been prepared for that.
I'd never been streamed, in intermediate and I was, we we're all, quite shocked
Our first week, we were sent to different classes to do different things.
(17:09):
And the hilarious thing was I obviously wanted to do Commercial,
so they sent me off to, I remember going upstairs to this classroom and we had to
do some form of shorthand strokes, so they put them up on the board,
And then we had to do these strokes of shorthand, which I had not seen before
(17:36):
and that's the only one that stuck out in my mind
about 'what was happening here?'
And I got actually streamed into the 'A' stream.
I had never been an 'A' student to that point.
I went into the professional class, first of all.
(18:01):
I was... I was allowed to do bookkeeping
in the professional class, or though that usually belong down in the Commercial class.
I have to say only lasted six months and in that stream, and they moved me back down
(18:23):
to the Commercial stream. {Rachel} At your request, or their...?
{Lorraine M} I bit of both, I was very unhappy, I was very unhappy. I was with...
{Rachel) You were struggling academically? {Lorraine M} I think so.
{Rachel} And socially? {Lorraine M} Yes, I came from Naenae, they (the other girls) came from Woburn,
(18:43):
they came from Eastbourne, and Days Bay, there were not many Wainuiomata girls in that class.
Nor was there many Naenae girls.
So it was a real... It was a real unhappy time and I think they felt it as well.
So by the second term, I went down to the 'B'... to the Commercial.
(19:07):
So then I was... {Rachel} You say you wanted to do commercial, why did you want to do commercial?
My mother... we were all raised so that we all had to have a trade,
So my oldest sibling, she became a dressmaker, my second sister in, she went hairdressing.
(19:30):
Didn't survive in that and became a retail worker.
My brother had to be a a plumber whether he liked it or not, and he hated it.
So he went plumbing and then I was the plumb of the family. I was the baby.
The rest resent me because I became a... you know, my mother wanted me to go into an office.
(19:52):
because by the time, by that time, my mother had progressed from farm work, factory work
to being in an office herself. My mother was working, she went back to work when I was eight,
she was one of the very few women in the street who was working.
And she worked her way up and she worked in the Defence building in Stout Street.
(20:19):
She wanted me to work in an office and shorthand typing was, you know, the in...
{Rachel} And what she, what was her role in Defence?
She was a clerical worker but she worked, I remember as a child, going upstairs and they were punch cards.
And her, and her friend, used to sort these punch cards, and they had this massive machine,
(20:46):
that they feed these punch cards in and I assume it printed stuff out at the bottom.
I don't know what it was. It'd be something to do with defence.
{Rachel} And your father's role in what his children were doing?
{Lorraine M} Well, my Dad was a foundry worker, so
but he was... the family was very political, so my father was a councillor,
(21:15):
on the Hutt City Council, when we were young children.
He, uhm, they waited 10 years to get the house in Naenae, so I was 18 months old,
and my sister's 10 years older than me, the oldest sister.
So we waited all, they waited all those years to get a State House. So he was a great leftie
(21:38):
in terms of people had to have housing, and jobs, and was well known in the community.
[Typewriter ding sound]
I only stayed third and fourth form. I wanted to go back to the fifth form
but I had been a difficult teenager, my first year in high school was a horrendous year,
(22:03):
for my mother, in particular. I had played up bobsy-die [fuss and trouble].
by heading into the fourth form, I was doing really well in my subjects,
and it was becoming quite fashionable, certainly if you lived in Eastbourne and Woburn,
you went back to school, right, you didn't leave in the fourth form.
(22:23):
But the Naenae girls, and the Wainui girls, the cannon fodder that went into factories,
and clerical work, left. But I wanted to go back.
One of my friends, there's four of us and we're still friends today, she went back,
and I wanted to go back but my Mother said 'No, you're going to go out now, and you're gonna get a job.'
(22:45):
So... during the school break, so we broke up end of fourth form,
she helped me apply for jobs, office junior jobs, which I did.
And I recall, I was on to my third one, didn't get the first two, because it was becoming apparent
(23:10):
even then, so you're looking at 1964 aren't you, that they sort of expected you to have School Cert,
even to be in an office. So that was the beginning of...yeah...
And the third one I went to - Hobb, Gillespie, Carter and Oakley, I blimmin' got it, the job.
(23:34):
So she was thrilled to bits. So I started there as an office junior.
And from there, I went to night school. So we went twice a week up to Wellington Polytech,
as it was in those days, to do Pitman's shorthand.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
(23:55):
{Presenter} Attending college in the 1950s, Gareth found that she loved learning shorthand and
was prepared for the workforce thanks to gaining Chamber of Commerce and Government exams
while still at school. [Typewriter ding sound]
{Eth} Which secondary school did you go to? {Gareth} I went to Wairarapa College,
Masterton, and I left there in 1957.
(24:18):
I took shorthand typing, and English, Geography and Home Science,
So, I took the Commercial course, Commercial Practice was also one of the lessons that
I never liked that much. I wasn't very good at math, but I did like...short hand, 270 00:24:441,000 --> 00:24:45,088 and yes, that was something that stayed with me all my life, really.
(24:45):
{Eth} What made you choose to do the commercial course? {Gareth} Well, it was either professional
or Commercial, or Home Science. And so, I think.. well I was ever going to be a teacher, or a professional.
So although I was a professional in what I did do. And so I chose shorthand typing,
(25:10):
and it was just the right thing for me. So did love it.
[Eth} Were there any expectations from your family as to what you would do, or did you have a free choice?
{Gareth} No, as long as we... I had a free choice so Wairarapa College was good education,
but good basic education. Yeah, other schools like Solway...St Matthews,
(25:39):
some of the students will have to come to Wairarapa College, to do some of the lessons.
I mean, we had everything there, I was very happy at college, and all my schooling really.
{Eth} And how long did you stay in secondary school?
{Gareth} Three years, I left when I was 16.
{Eth} Okay, and did you leave with any particular qualifications? And I don't just mean a diploma but in your commercial course?
(26:07):
Yes, I had my certificates. At school I did Chamber of Commerce exams. I've got here... Shorthand 110 words per minute.
And typing, Intermediate Typing Senior. So the marks I got, percentage mark
(26:28):
was 75% for shorthand and 93% for intermediate typing.
and 54 for Typing Senior, which was above my station really, because I also just learning.
And then I had my Government exam, I think this is the one that was the main thing for me,
(26:49):
which was Shorthand Typing and English.
I didn't sit School Cert because that year my father died... he died on my 16th birthday.
So we had quite a horrific time and I thought, well, you know, really I have got the marks,
So I wanted to be a shorthand typist, so that's what I became.
(27:10):
And once I had my certificate, well, I belonged to the Government really,
and I was placed at Child Welfare.
[Sound of typewriters]
{Presenter} Not an unusual occurrence in that era, Carolyn tells us about her mother attending her first job interview, in 1966.
(27:33):
And then how she ended up going to a business college to gain her typing and shorthand qualifications. [Typewriter ding]
{Eth} Tell us a little bit about the interview. Did your mother contribute or is she just a bystander?
No, Mum contributed, quite energetically, because I was just too shy to say anything about myself.
(27:54):
Ah, this was totally outside anything that I had ever experienced.
We were not prepared at school, for these type of things.
I had spent a year going to Gilbey's private business college.
At college, we had not been considered well-behaved
(28:15):
in our fourth form year, and the Headmistress decided to make our class,
a 4-year School Cert class, and out of the class of 30 odd girls, only one stayed on to do the School C[ertificate].
(28:37):
The rest of us left at the end of that year, and to compensate for the fact I wasn't going to get the level
of skill I needed, we, Mum sent me to the Business College,
and in actual fact, my grandmother had been a teacher at.
(28:57):
And that was valuable, at the end of that third year at College, I topped both shorthand and typing.
Not because I was anything brilliant, but because I had done all this extra work.
Four nights a week I went, and it set me on a path. That was my mother's suggestion,
(29:22):
I started college at 12 and I was expected to know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, at 12,
and I had no idea. And Mum said, 'Well, if you do go into the business classes, if you go and do those ones,
it'll stand your shorthand and typing stand you in good stead for the rest of your life,
(29:46):
no matter what you decide to do, and she was right.
{Eth} Mmm. {Carolyn} I've made a career out of that, and proud of my career.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Tungane came to New Zealand from the Cook Islands in 1968 to finish her secondary schooling
at Wellington Girls College. {Tungane} I'm from the Cook Islands, my father and mother.
(30:09):
My mom is half European and I was brought up there and I went to school in the Cook Islands.
I learned to speak English at school, that was our main language.
{Judith} Which part of the Cook Islands? {Tungane} In Rarotonga, but I'm actually from Aitutaki,
one of the small islands. Beautiful lagoon and all that. And my father was a teacher,
and we were moving all the time, and I went to school there.
(30:32):
And then we moved to Aitutaki, where I grew up there as well.
Went to school, went as far as college, Araura College, and then I got to go to Rarotonga
for the higher education in the college and that's where I finished,
(30:54):
well I didn't finish my schooling there. My father sent me to New Zealand
because he came to New Zealand as well and went to school here.
I'm not sure I've forgotten what college, and then that's he did to all his siblings,
my brother and sisters before me, they came here as well.
They're both teachers. And then he decided he wanted.. I was halfway through my college he said, 'Oh you're
(31:22):
going to New Zealand!' So it was challenging, you just go into the unknown.
{Judith} Were you happy about that?
{Tungane} Well, I was about 15 or 16 but I just went along with what I was told to do.
So I came with my sister and then I went to Wellington Girls College from 1968
(31:44):
to 1970. When I left school I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.
{Judith} What subjects did you take at school?
{Tungane} Well, I took a sewing, history, uhm...
[paper rustling sound] and uhm,
(32:05):
{Judith} Did you have any typing at school? {Tungane} Oh yes, yes, commercial, yes, I did, I did typing class at school
{Judith} What decided you to take that particular option? {Tungane} Well, it wasn't an option,
we had to do these subjects, so I ended up in the typing pool, our teacher was Miss Devlin.
She was a very strict teacher and... which was good for us.
(32:28):
We would have our bib, you know how you tied on to the [typewriter] and then on to your napkin,
If you... and she would come with a stick and hit your hand! {Judith} Did she?! {Tungane} Yes, she would!
If you cheated, so that went on. And then when it was time for me to leave school,
{Judith} Can I ask you if you learned shorthand at the same time? {Tungane} No.
(32:50):
{Judith} So not at school, you did typing. {Tungane} I did typing. {Judith} And what other parts
of any commercial course? Would you have done it any bookkeeping or anything?
{Tungane} No, I don't believe... {Judith} So it was one subject along with some of the other general... English, History,
Mathematics.{Tungane} So because I did typing and my sister.. or teacher, but I had no idea
what I was going to do. But then my sister had a friend, that worked in a typing pool.
(33:13):
Her name was Margaret, she said, 'Oh, go and see Margaret.'
So I went to her and then she employed me. {Judith} And where as that?
That was in Wellington and I worked at the Wellington Post Office Headquarters. {Judith} In Herd Street? {Tungane} Yes,
the main one, yeah, yeah. I worked there and I started off as a typist,
(33:36):
{Judith} So by this time you had School Certificate? {Tungane} I sat School Certificate but I wasn't successful.
I didn't pass the any, any of those. {Judith} It was very hard, it was pass fail, there was no middle ground.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Louise found that moving from a small country town to attend a large college in Wellington,
was something of an abrupt change that she wasn't expecting. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
(34:00):
{Judith} Anyway you had 1 term... {Louise} I had 1 term at Otaki College.. {Judith} You had a good typing teacher?
{Louise} Good teacher, Miss Kelly, she was very good teacher. {Judith} Tell me what you could do by the end of the first term?
By the end of the first term, you knew all your QWERTY, all your letters, all your alpha.
Right through, you could touch type, the whole, the whole alphabetic keyboard no trouble at all.
{Judith} Did you have short carriage or long carriage? {Louise} Long carriage, in those... yeah in those days, the old Imperial.
(34:26):
Imperial typewriter as they were. I think it was a long Carriage, it was quite a long time, to go back and that sort of jazz.
And, and at that stage, when I left, when we left Otaki College, I was one of the lower ones in the class.
I think there was probably about 16 or 17 of us in the typing class. I was one of the lower ones in the class...
{Judith} All girls? {Louise} All girls in the typing class yeah. And went down to Petone Tech which was known as
(34:51):
Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College and I wondered what I'd struck.
I have never seen such a disruptive mad house in all my life, could not believe what I struck.
Coming from a country town and being taught by the nuns, who were very strict.
Even though the boys to get up to mischief in the last couple years, they were still pretty strictly run.
(35:14):
And then Otaki College was pretty strict too, and then you went down to Petone 385 00:35:19000 --> 00:35:26,088 and it was just a mad house and I started off, I was in the commercial type class there,
in the first term, when I was there, I did shorthand and typing.
But I didn't carry on with the shorthand because I didn't pick it up very well
(35:35):
and I think probably having missed that first term, that was probably where the initial grounding of it was.
And you trying to play catch up [Typewriter ding sound} My typing was the top of the class.
{Judith} Top of the class when you went to Hutt Valley Memorial? {Louise} Yep, top of the class. [Sound of Typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Nicky wanted to be a seamstress but her skill as a typist meant she was in demand and was able to
(37:55):
pick her first Government job. A note for listeners, we apologise for the poor quality of this recording.
{Nicky} Okay, when I first joined the college and you had your main core subjects, but I was interested in
Art and typing were the other subjects that we could choose or Māori.
But in the third form, I had to take Art first but from the fifth form it was it was compulsory.
that we learn Māori. So that was my interest in typing because I used to watch the typing teacher
through the window typing on the old Olympia, and all the old Adlers, and I thought well
if she can do that, I can do that, so I took up typing as something that I knew I wanted to do.
When I initially came down here, I wasn't interested in typing.
I wanted to be a seamstress because I did a lot of sewing.
So that wasn't my interest to be in the typing pool, it was just when my CV was handed in
and they'd seen I'd done five years, experience in typing, and I could touch type, they asked
if I was interested in being a typist and then I went from there.
But the job was fun. Something totally different, my other job I had applied for was the Government Printing
in the old days? I went to the factory and I thought I'm not interested, it was too noisy for me.
I couldn't hear anything. It was just noise. So my interest wasn't in there and they offered me a job
there and I said 'No I can do better.' So it was more getting into the Government.
That was my goal. What our careers advisor said get into a Government and
You should be sweet, you know you'll have a good job in the Government
and that was what was put across us back in those days. Don't go anywhere else but the Government.
[Sound of typewriters clacking] 00:37:40,088 --> 00:37:45,088 {Presenter} Our next interviewee was unique as a typist, in being both Māori and male.
In this clip, Friday talks about how he wasn't the only boy who was taught typing at his Northland College. [Typewriter ding sound]
[Friday] Started at at Hillary College in 1983 and finished at the end of my sixth form year in 1986.
While I was there it was.. interesting, I, in terms of the subjects I did,
was all your standard ones, English, Maths, Māori, or the Sciences,
(38:22):
but in Form 3, we were given the option of doing six months of typing, and
Yeah so, {Judith} Really? In the third form? {Friday} In the third form. {Judith} How interesting.
{Friday} In the third form, we were all given the option to to do typing and another subject as well.
And then for the other six months was actually tech drawing and woodwork.
(38:47):
And I suppose it was the first notion there... dream of typing. {Judith} Keyboard skills, so early. {Friday} Yep.
{Judith} Did you have to have a typewriter with an apron on it? {Friday} It was. {Judith} Was it?
{Friday} We had a fantastic teacher, typing teacher. {Judith} Do you remember the teacher's name?
{Friday} No but if I saw her, I'd recognise her. {Judith} And how many other boys took typing?
(39:14):
{Friday} It was half and half. {Judith} Isn't that fascinating? {Friday} Actually we had to do it, to be honest.
I suppose there was a start of me actually having the first notion around typing.
Then what I got into the fourth form there was when I started choosing my subjects and I thought well
(39:34):
typing was, I think was a good subject. I was actually quite good at in Form 3
so I picked it up then. And so throughout the fourth form I think I did all the, uhm, core subjects.
And then it was when I started doing the Pitman's exams. {Judith} Oh did you?
(39:58):
{Judith} In the fourth form? {Friday} yeah, yeah.
{Judith} You were young to do that. Did you go out of the school to do that?
{Friday} No, no, we did them in school.
So you must have had a very forward thinking teacher. {Friday} Teacher, yeah, absolutely.
I can see her right now, she was so prim and proper [Laughter]
She treated everyone exactly the same. {Judith} Yeah. {Friday} Exactly the same.
(40:20):
Yeah so that was throughout the fourth form year, and then coming to the fifth form year,
I thought well, think I'll... {Judith} I'm good at this. {Friday} I am good at this so I'll just carry on.
Yeah so fifth form I started doing the the trade certificate exams. I started off with one and two, which I passed.
(40:43):
That was in my fifth form year, and then coming up to (19)86, when I moved into sixth form year,
I decide to take up shorthand as well. {Judith} Did you? Learn another language. {Friday} Well, basically.
And then there was actually during that year that I managed to get TCB Level 3 as well. {Judith} Fantastic.
(41:07):
Yeah so.. {Judith} So you got your qualifications in school?
{Friday} In school. [Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Many interviewees had stories of disrupted and interrupted education experiences.
Here Barbara talks about how her pathway to the typing pool was really due to a lack of access to her preferred accounting course. [Typewriter ding sound]
{Barbara} I originally was going to be an accountant because I thoroughly enjoyed accounting, but I would have had to go,
(41:35):
by that time, Petone Tech had started up again for girls, I was supposed to go Petone Tech
because my Dad was head prefect at Petone Tech many years ago.
So that was my path but it never never occurred because it was closed to girls
at that stage, when I started College.
And then it opened up again. {Judith} Closed to girls? {Barbara} Yes, it was for a period
(42:01):
while they were doing a big, a lot of building program. And so at that time, Waiwhetu Girls
was opened and then they started back again after I... it was the year I left College,
that they started going, opening up to girls again.
I would have had, because there was no bookkeeping at Waiwhetu Girls I would have had to
(42:22):
go to change schools and I thought 'No' and, because I got good marks
in all my shorthand stuff. I went to that path but I thought, well, I'll go to night school
and I'll get more shorthand exams, but if there is a bookkeeping job comes up,
I'll take it. But I never did. [Sound of typewriters clacking]
(42:44):
{Presenter} Leaving her small home town of Motueka in 1975, Rosemary attended Secretarial school in Nelson,
where she was taught other useful skills, as well as typing and shorthand. [Typewriter ding sound]
{Rosemary} I was born in Motueka in 1958 and went to Parklands Primary School
and then onto Motueka High School where I went through to my sixth form year.
(43:05):
With no idea what I wanted to do when I left school. I was walking passed the Assembly Hall
one day at school and I saw they had a Careers expo. Which, first I knew of it
was when I walked past it, and the Nelson Polytech as it was known then, had to stand there.
So, I went and had a look, and they were offering a Secretarial course. So I though uuuh, yeah,
(43:29):
I'll do that. So, I applied for the secretarial course, that would have been 1975 and was successful.
So I actually came to to NMIT, the polytech was what it was called in those days,
And did the Secretarial course in 1975.
And that was prior to this whole campus being built, we were in a little old house on Hardy Street.
(43:52):
I think there were three class intakes that year, I was on the top class,
and I excelled, which surprised me because up until then I hadn't excelled at much!
{Judith} So tell me what you had done at school? {Rosemary} Well at school. I did,
I studied, you know, the core subjects but I did French, and I did Art, there was nothing that really grabbed me
(44:17):
and was thinking.. {Judith} Was there commercial, were you streamed in any way?
We were streamed and I was in the highest, the second highest stream. Not quite sure how I got there.
I think it must have been because I was good at English. I did Accounting, French, Art,
so not commercial, not domestic as it was called then it was probably, I don't know...
(44:41):
{Judith} So there were 3, because there was professional academic, commercial usually and then there was home ec(onomics)
{Rosemary} Would have been professional. Yes it was.
{Judith} And School Cert, you done School Cert?
{Rosemary} Done School Cert, passed School Cert, did UE (University Entrance), I think I passed two subjects,
in UE. Boarded here in Nelson. It was the first time I've been away from home,
(45:05):
and I think I was quite a young... young for my age,
missed my family terribly. Used to go back to Motueka every weekend,
which was... {Judtih} A week boarder? {Rosemary} A week border, so it was..
a nice entry. {Judith} Homesick? {Rosemary} I was home sick. bordered with another girl from Motueka.
Which was good fun. Secretarial course we did shorthand and typing,
(45:29):
and other essential things like how to put on makeup.
{Judith} Oh did you! {Rosemary} We did! We had people come in and teach us how apply makeup.
{Judith} Really? This was 1975? [Indistinguishable talking]
{Rosemary} Well there you go, maybe it was a prerequisite, I don't know.
(45:49):
We learned flower arranging. Yeah. {Judith} The total secretary!
{Rosemary} The Total Secretary, how to arrange flowers, how to put on your makeup.
A bit of accounting, which I found really interesting. But the main focus was the
shorthand and typing of course. {Judith} And did you like shorthand? {Rosemary} I loved it, absolutely loved it.
(46:10):
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Lynn has always known she wanted to be a typist but found some resistance from the Deputy Principal
at Secondary School, about her choice of career. [Typewriter return carriage sound]
{Lynn} I was born in Masterton and I went to primary school at Lansdowne School
(46:30):
and then I went on to Makora College, which is where I first began my typing classes.
{Judith} And why did you take typing classes?
{Lynn} When I was four, I had a neighbour that lived over the road called Louise,
and she was a Secretary, she worked for an office in Masterton.
(46:53):
and she had her typewriter at home one weekend and I was fascinated.
I used to watch her typing, was an old black Imperial typewriter. And she uhm,
helped me to use the keyboard. {Judith} You were four? {Lynn} Yeah. And I typed a letter
that said when I grow up, I'm going to be a typist like Louise. {Judith} Did you keep the letter?
(47:14):
{Lynn} I did keep the letter. I kept it for a long time. I remember it was on quite wafer thin paper,
and it was in an envelope that Louise had put it in, and I used to look at from time to time.
And then when I was about 12, my Dad came home one day with a Herme's typewriter.
(47:36):
that he got second hand and so my parents bought me a 'Learn how to type' book
and I spent two years teaching myself the keyboard and then when I got to college, 518 00:47:450,060 --> 00:47:53,000 I actually could touch type when I first took the typing class.
{Judith} I've never heard before someone whose career began when they were four.
(47:57):
[Laughter] {Lynn} Yes, we, I never changed my mind.
I uhm, I did quite well at school. And I had a quite a stern old Deputy Principal,
and when I was in the sixth form or about to go into the sixth form,
she called me into her office and she said that I was wasting my life wanting to become a typist,
(48:19):
and that I should be going to University. And I went home and talked to my parents
and they said, but you're a young woman you should either be a typist, a nurse or a teacher
and, you know, if you go to University, you got to move away from Masterton into the big world.
And you'll probably get married soon and have children and so, you know, what a waste that would be. [Laughter]
(48:43):
{Judith} Classic isn't it?
{Lynn} And so I went back to school and this Deputy Head Teacher was not happy,
but I enrolled in typing and shorthand and continued those.
{Judith} How short-sighted of her? {Lynn} Yeah... And I did, there's been lots of times in my life
when I regretted not going to University and I think working in a university environment,
(49:07):
you see what could have been. And so, one year I actually did a Management paper
because I just needed to prove to myself that I could have done it, if I'd wanted to do it.
And I got an 'A' mark so I was really thrilled with that.
{Judith} If you had, if you had decided to go to university, what would you have done?
(49:29):
{Lynn} I think I would have liked to be a social worker.
{Judith} Do you? {Lynn} Yeah, yeah. {Judith} Well I guess, in lots of ways, your life probably has had a lot of social work involved.
{Lynn} Yeah I think as a PA or EA you kind of are, in that service kind of role. {Judith} Absolutely, looking after people.
{Lynn} Yeah, yes I think by the time I left school there was only seven people went through to the seventh form.
(49:55):
And there was probably only a couple of girls and one of those I think went on to be a District Court Judge.
{Judith} Really is that, right? {Lynn} But you had to be incredibly brainy,
I mean, I think only back then, only about five percent of people went University.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Debbie tells us about how she came to take the commercial stream at her secondary school,
(50:17):
and how influential her mother was in that decision. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
{Debbie} Interesting because in those days you had a choice between General and Commercial
and no, I didn't really have a choice. You arrived, you did General for Form 3
which now is Year 9. I did everything that other kids did, you know,
(50:42):
I had to learn French or the bits and pieces and then when it got to fourth form,
I got told that I was doing commercial because I was told I wasn't bright enough to go and do the General.
And so that's how I got into commercial practice, shorthand typing. All the generic things that, you know,
(51:04):
it was a choice, what were you going to do? Where you're going to be a teacher? A secretary or a nurse.
And so, I got told that's what I was doing. So I ended up doing the Commercial course with shorthand typing.
{Eth} So, who told you? {Lynn} My mother.
{Eth} So your mother had looked at your results or had she predetermined?
(51:26):
{Lynn} I think she looked at my results. Looking, looking back on things, I was actually a very young, a young 13 year old.
When I started at st. Mary's, possibly I should have been kept back a year but I was a young naive, wasn't a fast learner.
(51:47):
It was only as I got older that it sort of came about. But I think they sort of felt that that's... and Mum,
both my parents, actually Mum never got to finish college. So Mum got to do one year of St. Mary's and her father died,
when she was 14, and she ran the shop. Dad's father died when he was about 12.
(52:11):
And so he never even got to college, he was left to run the farm.
So I think what they thought was, if we could give a good start you know, secretarial would be the way to go.
get me in an office, wouldn't have been on the shop floor.
And so that was what was agreed. [Typewriter ding sound]
Finished in 77, Mum and Dad said, 'No, you're not staying on for sixth form' and I did a six month course
(52:37):
at Petone Polytech, where they had a thing called Administrative Practice.
And so I did all my Pitman's and my TCB Board and everything there.
And I did six months and then went job hunting.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} To help us understand how education policy was designed in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
(53:01):
I'm pleased to welcome, Sarah Christie, a Researcher, to the podcast.
Sarah is a PhD candidate with the Department of History at the University of Otago
and submitted her thesis in September 2021 titled 'Women and the New Zealand office 1945 to 1972'.
So Sarah, can you tell us a bit more about what was the spark for you, to want to write your thesis on women and office work?
(53:28):
{Sarah} Hello, thank you very much. I was wanting to do some further study. I'd been working in the University
in a clerical and administration role and wanted to go back and do some more history work.
And in trying to figure out what their topic would be, I wanted it to be something in the area of women and work.
(53:49):
And I was looking through the archives and finding all these beautifully typed pages of letters and minutes,
all without any mistakes. And I just thought nobody ever tells the story
of who actually created these documents and so that was really the spark that led me down to think,
okay what were, what was the role that women were playing in the office in this post war period.
(54:13):
[Typewriter carriage return sound]
What I found really interesting was how the education, and entry into the workforce, in those post-war years, in the 1950
through to the 1970s, was really impacted by the ideas and reforms that were undertaken prior to that in the 1930s and 1940s.
So, under the first Labour Government, the key shift for young woman was really around extending secondary education access,
(54:38):
from an idea that secondary education was for a minority based on exam that children
actually sat at the end of their primary schooling, to a model where secondary schooling was compulsory up to the age of 14.
So effectively, two years of free and compulsory secondary education.
Under the selection model secondary schools had been primarily academic but if everyone was now going to secondary school,
(55:03):
there was then a debate around 'What should the curriculum look like?'
And this debate was in the context of a country that have been through the Depression was currently in the midst of the second world war.
And so it focused a lot around citizenship, and what made a good citizen, and for Labour and the educationalists
that worked on this, the answer was really a student had a core academic education.
(55:27):
So Reading, Writing, Maths, rounded out with Music and Art and Physical Education.
And then the option to train towards the job that would suit their abilities and characteristics.
These reforms really allowed a great number, and a more diverse number, of women access to the education
that allowed them to become office workers.
(55:49):
But is also a flip side to that, the idealised version was, had a significant amount of student choice
but the implementation of that was underpinned by assumptions that, about women's role in the workplace,
and in the home. And the assumption that this was temporary for women. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
(56:10):
The School Certificate qualification was introduced in 1946. And at the start,
the subjects were supposed to be driven by their interests and their abilities.
But the implementation realities meant that the old distinctions between academic and vocational
ended up being reinforced. This was especially true in the post war years within the baby boom generation
(56:32):
hit the high schools, and there was not the resources to be individualistic, and the idea of those streams
that we hear the women talk about kind of just got reinforced and entrenched.
Those areas we hear, which was Home Craft, Commercial and then the Professional and Academic.
[Sound of typewriters clacking]
{Presenter} Ngā mihi nui, a big thank you to all the interviewees who shared the education experiences
(56:57):
and memories with us for episode 1. And to Sarah Christie, for her insights.
Coming up in episode 2, the Role of Education, Part 2, we hear from more interviewees about the challenges and
bias they faced in gaining an education, and how parents, teachers, and society, viewed their potential. [Typewriter carriage return sound]
The Keystrokes per Minute project was made possible by funding support from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage
(57:21):
and the Public Services Commission. Listeners can find out more about the project by visiting website
www.storycollective.nz. The soundtrack was kindly provided by permission
from the Boston Typewriter Orchestra.
Find their music and merchandise on Bandcamp.com. Thanks for listening. [Typewriter ding sound]
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