Education needs of

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 6

Education needs of

Chathams i 1 <From Our Own Reporter) TIMARU, September 3. There was an urgent need for the Government to tackle the question of education in the Chatham Islands, said Mrs F. Q. Lanauze yesterday. Though there were primary schools, there were no secondary schools and it was necessary for children to take correspondence lessons under the supervision of their primary school headmaster once they reached the third form, said said. Mrs Lanauze, whose husband is chairman of the Chatham Islands County Council, has been teaching homecraft at the Te One School for the last 10 years. She has been visiting New Zealand to attend a course at the Correspondence School in Wellington and has been staying in Geraldine this week. She said the “tragedy” was that many young persons left the island for secondary education. In her time on the island there had been retrogression. The younger generation was disappearing and the community was not as well-knit as it used to be. “There tends to be a divided population native islanders and newcomers.” UNSETTLING Mrs Lanauze finds her trips to New Zealand unsettling. She enjoys television, whereas all the island population can expect is a film once a week. Housekeeping also preisents problems, chiefly be--1 cause of what Mrs Lanauze preferred to as ‘.‘crippling” • freight rates. The cost of I freight (Mrs Lanauze paid 'sl3s freight on a lounge (suite) was stifling progress, as it almost prohibited farmers from engaging in topdressing and discouraged building on account of the high cost of the timber. There were, however, some compensations, said Mrs Lanauze. Life on the i Chathams was a good, healthy one. Women were the backbone of the community and had to work hard. It is a far cry from England, where Mrs Lanauze was bom, and where she met her I husband after the Second I World War when he was i convalescing after three | I years as a prisoner-of-war. 1