The Hawera Star. MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 1929. MAKING HISTORY LIVE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 14 January 1929, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 1929. MAKING HISTORY LIVE.

Delivered every evening by 6 o’clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby. Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. Mokoia, Whakamara, Ohangai, Meremere, Fraser Road, and Ararata.

In some of the loneliest Oxfordshire and Berkshire villages the children are learning history in a' novel and’ interesting manner. 'The story of the past, as far as it concerns their own surroundings,' i.s not obtained from bo:okS(, but from what more erudite historians call research. Encouraged by their teaieh- , ers, they are compiling a miniature i Domesday Book with a detail that should make it of future value ais a record of departing customs, of lands, buildings, and the general life of the; community. Wor king otm an ordinance survey map, they traced the fields of the parish, giving the names of the j fields and comparing these names, where possible, with those given as far back as the seventeenth century. In a number of cases the results 1 of their research showed how unchanging are parts of rural England, for the fieldl names of to-day aire the same as they were three centuries ago,. The young historians have recorded, like the Domesday Book surveyors of Norman times, the farm stock on each holding, and have tabulated the occupations in the village. The problem of communications by road, rail or canal has been tackled, and local roads, existing or disused, have provided a wealth of interest. In an attempt to reconstruct the life of the village they searched with varying success for the village pound of the long past, for the manor house, town gates or toll-bars, and old mills/ while illustrations of goue-iby local administration in the shape of the truncheon of the representative of the law, and specimens of old agricultural implements with descriptions’ of how they , were used, gained from the oldest inhabitants, are of absorbing interest to the children in re-creating the past. Old associations have been brought to light, for the whole British countryside bears traces of Romans, Saxons, Dames and the village aind its surroundings have probably a more interesting history than many of the towns, especially those in the industrial areas. Every remote hamlet of the Old Country has Its tale to tell', and while it is customary for the' schools to iteutah, and invariably from books, something of the Pyramids, but nothing of the village pound, something of the founding of American- settlements, but nothing of the founding of their own town or village, it cannot be wondered at that,too oft on it lie people know nothing of their own past. This experiment in the schools is not only successful as a survey of real 'historical value, but the work -has also been of great educational 1 value, and many a child will envy the small reaseareh student who found that > this ‘ ’‘mew kind of geography and his- ; tory’ allowed him to prepare for his homework a list of the. tame rabbits of ; tho village. To many, wedded to the idea of the desk and over-present book, • the experiment will savour more of pla.y than of work, -but there is an ob- , vious -educational lesson to be learned, i and these surveys of the past aire, : moreover, from the standpoint of professional research, a humble contribution to the study of man- and -his eim . vironmemt in -re-mote and unimportant localities.