Our Schools and the War: Victoria’s Education Department and the Great War, 1914-18, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, Vic., 2012
The Great War profoundly touched the lives of Australian teachers, school children and local communities, and with lasting consequences. Every teacher had the task of explaining the war to their students. Many teachers, a disproportionately large number, fought and died, and were joined by their older students. For years after, the names of those who fell were respectfully displayed on school honor boards, in honor books and remembered by other commemorative means, including through the introduction of Anzac Day. How teachers and school communities were affected by patriotic appeals and activities, and how they responded to the long years of grim news from Gallipoli, the Western Front and other sites of training, fighting and convalescence, is revealed in an account that historians, general readers and today’s students will find illuminating and deeply moving. (blurb)
A review is here.