RURAL EDUCATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 102, 30 March 1929, Page 12

RURAL EDUCATION

STATE AID SOUGHT. POSITION OF RANGIORA HIGH SCHOOL. A deputation from the Rangiora High School Board of Governors waited on the Minister for Education (Hon. Mr Atmore) this week, the subject being a request that the school should he made an agricultural school for the South Island, so as to put it on a similar basis to the Feilding School in the North Island. The headmaster (Mr J. E. Straclian) said that it was suggested that the school with its unique equipment and strongly ruralised curriculum, its staff specially selected and trained for such work, was worthy of recognition in the Government’s plan for reorganising post-primary education. In the I North Island there was a secondary school working out somewhat similar ideals to those of the-Rangiora School, and there ought to be a school in the south doing the same. But as the Ranigora Board of Governors was placed it could not offer the extended services suggested, for it could not house the boys. The Government built a hostel for the North Island school, but it left tlie Rangiora Board struggling along with the miserable housing accommodation the Minister had seen. They suggested that if their ideas and methods found favour with the Government, the board should be assisted to establish a suitable hostel for boys. They believed that if they could accommodate up to _ a hundred boys, or even, to begin with, fifty boys, tliey coulcl do a verv valuable service to the country.

“We have to create, or rather recreate, a love for rural life itself, an intelligent appreciation of what can be done with it, and a reluctance to abandon it for the more straitened life of the city,” Mr Strachan added. “A school can create that attitude of mind. This school is doing it. How is it doing it? Well, by steadfastly refusing to model its curriculum on the standards set by imported examination schedules; and by taking advantage of the fact that Nature, the material source of all knowledge, of all power, and of all understanding of 'life, is more accessible to us liere in New Zealand than it is to the children of English city schools. We believe we can give our children a better and more liberal education here than we could if were located in a crowded city. “Our children are growing up to know Nature intimately, to be interested in Nature, to find their greatest happiness in association with Nature, and their natural vocation in co-opera-tion with Nature. I consider that we are doing as much to solve the urban drift problem in our literature classes, in our music classes, and in our art classes as we are when we teach boys how to plan a crop rotation or how to class their wool. And that is because we teach our literature, our fine arts, and our practical arts in association with their natural source. We are helping our young people to find more satisfaction in poems and pictures, in the . pursuit of open air hobbies, in fishing in the streams, or in sketching by the wayside than in crowding into city streets or city theatres. Moreover, %we are encouraging them to take part in the village community life of their district, and we are giving them ideas for improving!that village .life. All these social and cultural activities in the school are directed to the same end as in the more practical vocational training.” The said that while he was pleased with the work done by the Rangiora High School he considered tliat better work was being done at Feilding where, however, there was a greater acreage to the school and better equipment. So far as Rangiora was concerned, he considered that the district was admirably suited for the establishment of an agricultural high school. It was necessary that the best brains should be associated with the agricultural industry. Ho could assure those present that the Government would be prepared to give every consideration to raising the social status of the farmer. The request of the board would be placed before Cabinet.