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As soon as they were old enough, the majority of ItaUan-speaking children left
school to work full-time on the family farm or business ~ often willingly as the extra
contribution lifted their status wdthin the home and placed boys on a more even footing
with their fathers. While the sons of wealthy squatters could further their education at
coUeges in Geelong or Melboume, or at a Gentlemen's Academy opened in Daylesford
in the 1860s, few Italian speakers were given such opportunities. Those who worked
outside the home were either in unskilled labouring jobs or apprenticeships, most
maintaining the employment pattems of their parents in farms, grocery shops and
hotels. Only in the third or fourth generation did some achieve tertiary qualifications
and professional careers.
At school, the children of the Colony leamed reading, writing, arithmetic, fine
handwriting and neatness, history and geography. In preparation for their future
working lives, in years seven and eight, boys concentrated more upon arithmetic and
accounting and girls upon needlework ~ skills which the Italian speakers viewed as
either irrelevant or as duplication of knowledge gained in the home. The acquisition of
good EngUsh skiUs was, however, important to all children, and school was a major
factor contributing to attrition of the ItaUan speakers' mother language. Other factors
included the lack of Italian reading matter in the Colony and the tendency for married
couples to speak in English where one partner was of Anglo-Cekic origin. Within the
Italian-speaking community, the high rate of iUiteracy hindered maintenance of their
mother tongue, it being mainly passed on to the chUdren in oral rather than written
form and hence easily lost in the next generation. When one parent died at an early
age, as happened in the Gaggioni home, the tendency was to speak English, the
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