The outdoor classroom: School camping as education in NSW 1890–1960s

Abstract

IntroductionOutdoor education is now a well-established subject area in New South Wales schools and is popular at primary and secondary school levels in both public and corporate schools. Neill (2001) noted that, "a reasonable hypothesis is that most Australian students would at some point during their schooling participate in at least one substantial camping or outdoor education program" (p. 2). At the Higher School Certificate level the subject even forms an elective part of the Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) Stage 6 Syllabus (NSW Board of Studies, 2009). Furthermore, many Australian universities offer specific units of study related to outdoor education as part of physical education teacher education programs. Beyond specialist physical education teacher preparation a wide range of students from fields such as health education and arts enrol in outdoor education programs. There is also a significant market for outdoor education courses of study for fee paying study abroad students. These outdoor education units of study offer international students the opportunity of combining studies with the exploration of the unique Australian landscape. At some universities such as La Trobe University and Wollongong University, outdoor education is a designated area of scholarship, with associated students from undergraduate level to PhD level. Even in primary schools, where there is concern by educational researchers and practitioners with the sparse amount of time offered in physical education within generalist primary pre-service programs, (see for example, Light & Georgakis, 2007), some programs, such as that at the University of Melbourne, feature a strong outdoor education component.Outdoor education has a significant presence in schools and teacher preparation programs and there is a body of research published on different aspects of the subject area, in journals such as the Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, but there is little research that has specifically focused on its educational history. This is surprising when one considers the situation in the associated areas of the history of school sport (Collins et al., 1990; Sherington 1983) and physical education (see for example, Kirk, 1998) where histories of school sport and physical education have been used to historically locate a range of research (see for example, Light & Kirk, 2000, 2001). In addition to these areas there is a distinct field of research in the history of sport that boasts a large and significant body of literature on sport across the globe with a range of international journals in the area such as the respected journals, International Journal of the History of Sport and the Journal of Sports History. While these journals cover a range of areas of research in the history of sport and associated activities they are silent on the history of outdoor education. Perhaps one reason may be that scholars do not see outdoor education as being sport or connected to it in any way. Others such as Brookes (2002) noted that the lack of attention to outdoor education as a district area of curriculum is due to the perception that:From a curriculum studies perspective, outdoor education appears as a confusing tangle of influences and associations, which range, at least vestigially, from evangelical Christianity through military training to communitarianism. Moreover, the Australian outdoor-education literature may fail to convince anyone that there is much of curriculum significance in the mix. Considering some criticisms that have been made of some outdoor education, silence in curriculum studies on the subject of outdoor education might be seen as appropriate or tactful. (pp. 21- 22)The literature that focuses specifically on the history of Australian outdoor education is limited to a few articles (Brookes, 2002; Lugg & Martin 2001; Neill, 2001; Neill & Gray, 2001). The perception in other articles is that outdoor education in Australia is a post-World War II phenomenon established at around the time of the arrival of Outward Bound in Australia in 1956 (Gass, 1998; Herbert, 1998). …