ABSTRACT
If by any chance the young teacher still had any spirit left in him after this course of training, the conditions under which he was expected to practise his profession were calculated to grind it out of him, for in most of the Australian colonies in the last quarter of the nineteenth century teachers were engaged under a system of ‘payment by results’ whereby their livelihood was made dependent upon their success in beating the three R's into their unfortunate charges. (Austin, 1961:237)
