The voices of the junior teachers: Exploitation or experience in South Australian schools 1931‐1945?

This article argues that memoirs from within a humanistic sociological framework can provide a measure of balance sometimes lacking in accounts reliant entirely on contemporary documentation. Evidence from the case brought in 1943 against the junior teacher system in South Australian schools, while persuasive, provides practically the only evidence for any subsequent history of the period. Memoirs of former junior teachers from this time, however, present quite different views on several of the major charges against the system and generally illustrate certain benefits in lengthy periods of practical experience. Juxtaposing these accounts provides for a better balanced and more useful account of a generally neglected period of educational history. Such a re‐visioning is timely in view of increasingly widespread concern about the practical side of teacher training and calls from within training circles for a significantly longer introduction of trainees to the realities of the classroom.