Sowing seeds for development: Cyril Jackson’s attempts to establish relevant schooling in a rural setting in Western Australia, 1896‐1903 Available to Purchase

This article puts a fresh light on Jackson’s elementary curriculum in Western Australia which was a unique blend of the ‘new education’, designed to complement the Western Australia government’s economic development policies. In this respect, he followed the work of Rooper, who brought an agricultural emphasis to rural elementary education in England. In Western Australia, Jackson not only promoted the established practical forms of the ‘new education’ but, swayed by political leaders, encouraged a rural focus on the elementary government school curriculum, both for educational as well as utilitarian purposes, thereby serving the needs of the individual as well as the colonial economy.