Research into School Journal uncovers family history

Research into School Journal uncovers family history

A research project into the New Zealand School Journal’s portrayal of the ANZAC legend in World War I almost didn’t get started, but when it did, the academic behind it uncovered a personal journey into her family history.

Associate Professor Carol Mutch, head of Critical Studies in Education at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education, started the project more than two-years ago with Christchurch historian Sarah Christie.

The two researchers decided to use the School Journal as their main source on how educational materials shaped young people’s thinking about the ANZACs. The School Journal has been part of New Zealand classroom since 1907 and, during WWI, it portrayed the war as a glorious campaign by strong masculine heroes, when they were ordinary men facing an impossible task.

By coincidence, during the research, one of Carol’s cousins made an on-line addition to the family tree that described how a Great Uncle she had never heard of, Samuel Gurden, was killed in action at Gallipoli in 1915.

In another twist to the project, Carol will be able to pay her respects to him when she accompanies her son, Nicholas, who received two attendance passes in last year’s ballot to the 100th Anzac Day commemorations at Gallipoli next month.
She leaves on April 10 and is full of nervous anticipation about the trip.

“I don’t know what it will be like. I do know it will be very emotional,” she says.
“He was a stoker, he was down in the ship when the bomb hit and he was buried at sea.”

Samuel Gurden entered the Royal Navy in 1908 aged just 22. He was on the HMS Grafton when he was killed in enemy action while on duty in Suvla Bay, Gallipoli. He was just 29 years old.

“He deserves to have his life celebrated,” says Carol. “My son will be 23 when we go. Great Uncle Samuel was a bit older than that but still a young man in his 20s when his life was absolutely cut short.”

For Carol, having an ancestor die in the futile campaign to retain the Gallipoli peninsula from the Turks has made the School Journal research even more relevant to her.

“I thought, just like any researcher, how can I write about Gallipoli when I’ve never been there? I can read stories about Chunuk Bair and Brighton Beach and ANZAC Cove, but I don’t have a sense of them.”

“Now I will have the opportunity to immerse myself in the place and really get a sense of it.”

The visit to Gallipoli is also significant given that the whole research project was at risk of failing before it had even begun. No sooner had they decided to use the School Journal they discovered that copies printed before 1980 were not available on-line, and it was difficult to trace physical copies of the journal during WWI.
A nationwide search ensued, only for the most complete set of the journals to ironically be found in the Sylvia Ashton-Warner Library on Faculty of Education’s Epsom Campus.

After discovering the journals were too delicate to simply photocopy, they were sent to the University’s General Library on the City Campus where a state-of-the-art scanning machine was used to carefully and slowly scan every edition.

So far Carol’s assistants have scanned the journals and summarised key articles up to the 1940s, while Sarah Christie and a team in Christchurch have worked backwards from the 1980s to make a photocopied record.

The project grew from a study of WWI to include other wars in the last century.
Under the themes of courage, resilience, celebration and the anti-war movement the team are creating a data base that it is hoped the public can use as a study aid in the future.

But Carol says the team is not making judgements on the way the School Journal was used as a tool to portray particular representations of war, but rather sees the journals as a rich resource into our past.

“Early on what we found was there would be a report on the ANZACs and alongside that there might be a story about Alexander the Great”, Carol says. “So they were portraying our brave men alongside heroes out of myths and legends, or real history, so that people couldn’t help but be imbued with this whole idea of heroism and courage and manliness and so on.

“What does this tell us about us? What does it tell us about us as a nation and how we define ourselves? What does it tell us about us and our role on the global stage?”

“Going to war in the First World War, these men weren’t actually going to war against New Zealand’s enemy. They were going to war for Britain, which was fighting against Germany, and the Ottoman Turks happened to side with the Germans, Carol says.

“Suddenly they found themselves scaling these cliffs at Gallipoli, shooting people who weren’t actually their enemy.

“They dug themselves into that hillside and managed to stay there for eight months, against a force that was twice, three times their size.

“I can see why people say the ANZACs were the start of this New Zealand identity, because they did seem to represent what we pride ourselves in; giving everything a go and never giving up, being prepared to break the conventions to achieve our goals, and problem solving with number eight wire. Those men went there and that is what they did.”

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