SCHOOL’S PLACE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 17, 18 December 1935, Page 2

SCHOOL’S PLACE

NOT IMPERSONAL UNIT. ALERT 1 CITIZENRY WANTED. “What is the community’s duty to the school ? The obligation is by no means all on one side. The basic ideal of democratic society is co-opera-tion. The relationship of the several institutions of society is partnership. Your schools are partners in the business of advancing the social and cultural welfare of Palmerston North and the Manawatu. It is perilously easy for us 'to forget that,” declared Mr J. H. Hall, editor of the Dominion, Wellington, when speaking at the breaking-up ceremony of the Palmerston North High Schools, last evening, after dealing with the functions of the school for the community. “We are so accustomed to hearing and reading of our national education system,” he added, “that we come to think of it as a system and of individual schools as distant, impersonal units in a system—a system Which touches us but does not concern us. Trv to forget the system, the standardisation, the bureaucratic striving for uniformity. Instead, try to think of the Palmerston North High Schools as the district schools —your schools—taking a vital part in the progress and prosperity of the community. And when you can get that picture fixed in your minds, ask vourselves squarely if you are supporting the schools as you ought. You who are here tonight must be their well-wishers, or you would not bo here. But how practical is your well-wishing? Can the lady principal and the rector, and the Board of Governors count on your active support in every effort to help the schools? Are you keen enough to infect your neighbours with keenness; to influence them to send their children here, and to leave them here long enough for schooling to he of real benefit? Don’t let them expect, don’t yourselves expect, a magic touch that will smooth from pupils’ paths all the difficulties of life. Don’t look to a high school training as the door to an easy job. “Within 10 to 20 years this country will have to take its place in the international councils of the Pacific basin. We are growing up to nationhood. And with every passing year it is increasingly necessary, that we should have a vigorous, alert, educated citizenry animated by the highest principles of social betterment and ready to spend themselves in unpaid public service. You can help assure that here in Palmerston North by your support of these High Schools, by assisting to make them focal points of district culture, and by strengthening the hands of governors and teachers in tlieir task. NO ROSE STREWN PATHS.

“Now, I have tried to address myself first to the school and then to the community, or at least to the small section of the community registered .here. Some of you. may feel yourselves in neither group. You stand to-night on the borderline. Your schooldays are ending; you are going out into the world. You will not find it an easy, world, with rose-strewn paths and valleys always filled with sunshine. Life is likely to be a grim business for most of the nations of the earth for fiye or ten years to come. Not so much for us .as for people whose countries are less favoured by Nature; yet serious for everyone. But all the more worth living for being serious; all the more attractive for its challenging obstacles. Judged by Old World standards, yours are young schools, and you are building their traditions. Ours is a young country, and we are building its traditions. Me are building also, in this generation, to repair the terrible gap left by the loss in battle of nearly twenty thousand of our finest men, and by. the permanent incapacitation in some particular of twice as many more. In part, we have to do the work they left undone lieeause their country called them. It is our country as well; and it calls us; it calls you. A DOUBLE TRUST.

“You are civilians, not soldiers,” said Mr Hall, after drawing an analogy with a scene in the play ‘Journey’s End”; “but your school and country look to you. Some of you may travel far and gather distinctions as you go; others will not. It may be given to some of you to do big things for New Zealand ; others will not get the chance. But all of you have this in common —that you are old boys or old girls of on© of these two schools, and subjects of one Empire: and every one of you can be true to tlie double trust reposed in him. However, far vou may roam, and whatever your station in life, there will be many times when your mind turns back to your old school. Then, when thoughts going winging, it may be across half the world, what I have tried to say to-night may be boiled down into very small compass. Whoever you be and wherever you be, what your country asks of you, what your school expects of you, is just this : That at &ny time —ten, twenty, forty years hence —you should be proud to come back to Palmerston North, in the flesli or in the sp-irit; proud to stand again before your school; to go in once more at tlie old familiar door, and, baring your head, to say in simple earnestness: ‘To the best of mv ability, I have used tlie keys of citizenship you gave me. I have kept my trust. I havo not let you down.’ ” (Applause.)