SCATTERED PUPILS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 98, 19 January 1935, Page 21

SCATTERED PUPILS

Work of the Correspondence School ANNUAL MAGAZINE “The Postman” is unique among New Zealand school magazines: not so much on account of its contents, although these are not of type that is ordinarily met with, but because of the utiWre of the school and its readers. It is the magazine of the Correspondence School of the New Zealand Education Department. This school is just as much a unity as any other school; a glance at “The Postman” will bring this fact home. Perhaps it is more real in tne lives of those whom circumstances debar from attending a school than most educational establishments are to their daily pupils. There is certainly no lack of contributions to the magazine, and one can imagine that the annual publication has many avid readers. The most significant feature of the work of the school for many years is the formation of an ex-pupils’ association, which, with an executive committee at the school headquarters in Wellington and local branches, will foster desirable traditions, keep expupils interested in the activities of the school, and unite interests to provide opportunities for friendly intercourse and co-operation. Just what Correspondence School pupils can do is soon revealed to the reader of “The Postman.” They were again successful in the annual Forestry League Competition. They have won prizes for gardening, essay writing, cooking and sewing in shows and competitions. Several poems by them, which previously appeared in “The Postman,” are to be included in an anthology of international verse compiled by Zoe Patricia Hobbs, and published by a New York firm. But the school is steadily widening its scope of extra-classroom activities. There is now a stamp exchange club, a pen friendship club, a Meccano and magazine circle, a library, and troops of lone scouts and lone guides. Pupils can send specimens to tbe school museum ; some rare contributions this year include two fossils, one a large bivalve, the other an extinct species of crab, a moon moth and a Monarch butterfly. Although not actively connected with school lessons, these interests have proved of great value in binding the school together as a unit. They have also brought to isolated pupils the great benefits of wider social contacts with other pupils having common interests. The contributions themselves reflect the nature of the lives that the pupils live. They have no predilection for a city life; they are concerned with the sea, the hills, and the stars; they talk of their occupations with their pets, on their farms or at the lighthouses where they live. Some of the higher pupils have devoted time to research in various aspects of these matters; thus there are articles on the art of taxidermy, the first woollen mill, New Zealand sea birds, and Maori history and mythology; articles of quite as high a literary standard as is to be found in any school magazine. The magazine has added interest lent to it by the photographs depicting many phases of the pupils’ activities. From an artistic point of view, those submitted for the Camera Club competition are excellent.