Going on show

Elizabeth Woods was one of many students attending the North Sandhurst State School; during the year 1887 she had produced a work book which was destined to be put on show.
Her work covered the subjects in the curriculum of the time, some of which are more recognisable than others compared to what is taught in schools today.
Earlier in her schooling Elizabeth did copybook work, which entailed her practising her handwriting against a printed example on the top line of each of the pages of the copybook.
The challenge with copy book writing was to emulate the printed form to absolute perfection.
The angle of the script had to be correct and consistent as well as the form of each of the letters.
Writing using liquid ink with a pen that had a steel nib, something that required a great deal of practice to have it executed in a fluid copperplate style.
One example of her work was reproduced last week.
The sample work book that Elizabeth produced had the following in its pages:
Geography, where geo-graphical names were given, these had to be identified in two additional columns under the headings of What and Where, most of the places were either in Europe, North America or Australia.
Arithmetic was in the form of problems which required both multiplication and long division.
Sums were for her level, in the form of multiplication and division of fractions.
History consisted of copied notes mainly dealing with the British Royals.
Parsing, the grammatical breakdown of a particular sentence in the most analytical way.
The work that Elizabeth did as a 13 year old would flummox a university language student of today.
Analysis was related to parsing, however, in this case the sentences were broken up into the kind, subject, predicate, object and extension.
Grammar, again this was the same as parsing.
Dictation was another language-related subject, normally followed by the testing of tricky words.
Compositions were also interspersed throughout her work book.
There was often a moral in the subject matter that was either given or chosen.
Poetry was, I assume, copied as the vocabulary showed a great command of the language.
Map drawing, of individual countries or a section of the European continent showing the principal cities, rivers and mountain ranges.
The maps that she drew appear not to be traced so they show very great drafting skill in proportions and rendering.
Appropriately, the one map drawn relevant to Australia, was that of the colony of South Australia.
To mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 a special Jubilee Exhibition was held in Adelaide, which at the time was still a relatively small city.
The exhibition was nothing of the scale or grandeur as the first Great Exhibition of 1851, held in the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park London.
1887 was a year of achievement for South Australia, the railway lines from Victoria met at the border at Serviceton on January 19.
The first intercolonial medical conference was held on April 13, 1887 in Adelaide, while in November Parliamentarians for South Australia were to be paid.
The Jubilee Exhibition was to also display some school work from the adjoining colonies. Elizabeth’s work book was submitted to be on show.

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