4 minute read
From the Archives
May 2021
Grammarian, 1977
One of the major lessons learned by the Camberwell Grammar community during the 2020 pandemic-caused interruptions to our educational program was the irreplaceable value of technology. The practice of ‘home schooling’ would have been considerably onerous without our access to computers and technological methods such as Zoom, allowing our students to maintain contact with their teachers and peers. None of this could have been imagined over four decades ago when the introduction of computers to the School was first considered by the governing Council. ‘Computer Studies’ had been introduced to the School in 1976, but only as an ‘Activity’ sponsored by a Computer Society, with work centring on the production of rather primitive programming cards given the admission that ‘computers cannot think’. These cards were then taken to Monash University, where they were put through one of the few university computers ‘about the size of a washing machine’. Soon, it was time to consider the acquisition and usage of a computer on the Mont Albert Road campus itself, so in April 1977 Headmaster Dyer reported to the School Council that after a two-week trial, computer systems were now being successfully employed ‘for educational purposes as well as for the school accounting program’. The nascent computer staff needed immediately to remind boys of the capabilities and restrictions of these new devices. These were listed as both the creation and eradication of certain employment opportunities; the 100% necessity of providing computers with accurate instructions and data; the need for frequent and regular checking of information and, finally, strict attention to detail: ‘A missing full-stop, comma, spelling mistake or line too short, too long or not vertical will produce errors’. In addition, the Headmaster informed the Council that computers could be used for ‘rapid and accurate marking’, for the production of ‘different but equivalent tests for each member of a year or class’ with special potential, so he thought, for students in HSC Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Maths. Anticipating some concern from an inevitably economically cautious Council about the cost of introducing these devices to the School, there was an assurance that computers may ‘simulate experiments which are too difficult, dangerous or expensive to carry out such as radioactive decay of uranium particles and the relation between the amount
In the beginning… Soon, the laptop was king.
and volume of a gas at constant temperature and pressure – two matters dealt with in Year 11 Chemistry’. The Council was conscious that there were obvious problems about radioactivity and gas leakage were such experiments to be held in the absence of these promising devices. There was no suggestion in 1977 of the usage of these devices in the Humanities, despite the Headmaster’s conviction that ‘computer programming teaches and encourages logical thinking – mathematical skill is not required for this’. However, those involved with Computer Studies were soon convinced that were there was no alternative to the introduction of computers into all aspects of school life, arguing in the 1977 Grammarian that: ‘Woe betide the person who doesn’t have at least a working knowledge of computers and their operation in the society that today’s students will face’. Accordingly, in May 1977 the School had installed a PDP/11.05 computer – soon known as ‘the computer’ – with line printer, card reader and two disk drives (for information storage). Although some of the teachers were said to be intimidated by this new machine, the Computer Room was beset daily by enthusiastic students from 7.15am onwards up to 5.30pm creating what some saw as ‘semichaos’ and ‘bedlam’. Perhaps the boys were inspired by what they had seen in the 1968 cult movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the onboard computer HAL-9000 had attempted to control his astronautical masters; perhaps those reluctant teachers were consolingly mindful that HAL’s malefaction had eventually been terminated by a human hand. Soon the Camberwell computer programs began to be utilised in the classroom itself for Year 10 Advanced Maths and eventually for Accounting and Business Studies. Over the following decades, the devices became common amongst all members of the school community at both an institutional level and through the use of personal devices such as the ubiquitous laptop of our own time. Unlike the scientificallyoriented visions of the 1970s, computer usage was soon found amongst all subjects that the School offered. Whatever the ills of the 2020 pandemic, that year did demonstrate that the 1977 student ‘wave of interest’ noted by the Grammarian has become a tsunami, and a generally welcome one. Neither the Council, the Headmaster, the computer staff, nor even the fictional HAL, in that recent past could have imagined our utter reliance on these devices in the 2020s.
