A pocket of empowerment?: women's memories of selective schooling in Newcastle, 1930s to 1950s

This paper examines the educational experiences and outcomes of a small group of women who attended Newcastle Girls High School in the period 1930s to the 1950s. It utilises oral history methodology, informed by feminist philosophy and practice. The paper shows two ways of approaching the data. The first represents the traditional oral history methodology and explores the schooling experience from the students' point of view including reflections about teachers and subjects. The second approach searches out motifs within and across the testimonies to reveal mythologies about those experiences. Overall the paper concludes that, despite their divergent recollections, the school empowered the women to carve out a role for themselves within the restricted gender regime. It further suggests how the concept of selective schooling might be sustained by mythologies about it discovered in the women's words.