Adelaide Miethke and Alfred Traeger, both South Australian, use radio idea for school of the air in the outback
Adelaide Miethke built on an earlier idea for a world-first school of the air by another South Australian, Alfred Traeger.
Adelaide Miethke, a member of the council of the flying doctor service of South Australia, drove the idea in 1944 of using the service’s two-way radio to give education talks to children in outback Australia.
Miethke, an Adelaide teacher and wide-ranging contributor to education, brought the founding energy to an earlier idea for a school of the air by another South Australian, Alfred Traeger. Traeger invented the two-way pedal-powered radio that enabled the Rev. John Flynn of the Australian Inland Mission to get the communication technology needed for his flying doctor service from 1929.
After a long wait for special communications equipment, a trial program for the school of the air began in 1850, using teachers from Alice Springs Higher Primary School. The first official lessons were sent from the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Alice Springs on June 8, 1951. Miethke told outback children listening to the opening ceremony that they were taking part in the first school of the air in the world.
The school had been set up with funds left over from the South Australian schools’ patriotic fund of World War II. Mietthke had directed that fund 1941-46 and served on the Women’s War Service Council. Besides enabling the school of the air to start, surplus money from the schools’ patriotic fund also went towards building a hostel, named Adelaide Miethke House, run by the YMCA and to be used by country girls attending schools in Adelaide.
The daughter of schoolmaster Rudolph Miethke, Adelaide “Addie” Miethke rose rapidly as teacher within the South Australian education department to be senior mistress at Woodville High School. She was also secretary for six years and president for 12 years of the Women’s Teachers Progressive League (formed in 1912) that gained improvements in training qualifications, outback work, teaching conditions, system of examinations and inspection.