An Autobiography by Catherine Helen Spence

I was the first woman appointed on a Board of Advice under the Education Department, and found the work interesting. The powers of the board were limited to an expenditure of 5 pounds for repairs without applying to the department and to interviewing the parents of children who had failed to attend the prescribed number of days, as well as those who pleaded poverty as an excuse for the non-payment of fees. I always felt that the school fees were a heavy burden on the poor, and rejoiced accordingly when free education was introduced into South Australia. This was the second State to adopt this great reform, Victoria preceding it by a few years. I objected to the payment of fees on another ground. I felt they bore heavily on the innocent children themselves through the notion of caste which was created in the minds of those who paid fees to the detriment of their less fortunate school companions. And again, education that is compulsory should be free.

Other women have since become members of School Boards, but I was the pioneer of that branch of public work for women in this State. It is a privilege that American women have been fighting for for many years -- to vote for and to be eligible to sit on School Boards. In many of the States this has been won to their great advantage. In this present year of 1910 Mrs. Ella, Flagg Young, at the age of 65, has been elected by the Chigago Board, Director of the Education of that great city of over two millions of inhabitants at a salary of 2,000 pounds a year, with a male university professor as an assistant. At an age when we in South Australia are commanding our teachers to retire, in Chicago, which is said by Foster Fraser to cashier men at 40, this elderly woman has entered into her great power.