SOME OLD SCHOOLS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21698, 13 January 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

SOME OLD SCHOOLS

BY KOTARE

SIXTY YEARS SYNE

I have had so many requests for further details about the schools established in the seventies that I am summarising the individual criticisms attached by Inspector O'Sullivan to the first report submitted to the Provincial Council. Remember, one system had broken down. The new public system was not yet properly on its feet. There was a dearth of school buildings, of teachers, and even of scholars. The times were hard. Compulsory education was still to come. There was so much work in those pioneer days for even young children that school attendance was frequently irregular and averages were surprisingly low judged by modern standards. Still, when one remembers that this was the first year of the system that was ultimately to blossom into the free, compulsory, secular education of to-day, the results achieved in so short a time were more than creditable.

There is a romance attaching to one's school days that grows as the road from them lengthens. Many of our older citizens learned their rudiments sixty years ago in the old building among the scrub, or huddled uncomfortably in the pews they occupied from other motives on the Sunday. There has been a sincerity about the diamond jubilees celebrated in connection with so many of our schools in the last year or two that does not always mark commemorative functions. The facts I give hero will stir some, old memories and may help to make the past more real to a younger generation.

The North In . 1870, Whangarei school had sixty pupils on the I'oll. It was the first year of its existence, and most of the pupils had not been •at any other school. Still, the report is that the reading was good. Parents must have done their best for their children in the absence of any public school. All through, the report is commendatory, though the inspector notes that the girls do not seem anxious to learn needlework; probably they had been taught that also at home, and valued in the school work the things that were different from the home routine. The school was held in a church which the inspector reports as quite unsuitable. The school at Whangarei Heads was a much older establishment taken over under the new system. It had its own building, though it was inadequately furnished. The standard of work was high, and the master wins a special word of praise because he has founded a library. -There occurs here a criticism that crops up again and again in the reports. Where there are maps, they are exclusively of foreign countries or of Great Britain. The New Zealand consciousness has not yet developed. There are no maps of New Zealand' and none of the Auckland Province. The settlers still evidently regarded themselves as exiles in a far land. The provincial system tended to foster that attitude of mind. Waipu Central school had fifty-five scholars, and a building of its own which was far too small, and had so few desks that there was no opportunity for adequate teaching of writing. Still, the inspector persuaded the committee to lengthen the building by fifteen feet. He noted that all the children read in too low a tone, a characteristic nearly always associated with self-conscious youth and almost inevitable where some fifty children are crowded into a. small space and half-a-dozen different lessons are going on at the same time.

Difficulties The North River school at Waipu had been in existence for many years and the work had reached a high standard. Many of the pupils came to the school with only a smattering of English and some of them knew nothing but the ancestral Gaelic. But they had the Caledonian enthusiasm for education, and their progress is recorded as most satisfactory. The building, as usual, was far too small, but the local committee had in hand the provision of a larger schoolhouse. There was a third school at Waipu Cove. It was distinguished among its brethren by being large enough for the thirty-five children on the roll. At Port Albert the school was of long standing, and was held in a large room in a private house. There was evidently a battle of sites, and, until agreement could be reached among contending factions, iu the private house the school must remain. Of twenty-five pupils on the roll twenty-four appeared before the inspector, the highest percentage in all his tour. At Matakohe the scholars —some thirteen —met in the porch of a chapel, and the state of the roads madeattendance difficult in the winter. At Paparoa, again, the school was in the church, but the enthusiasm of the teacher had evoked a response .that delighted the inspector. There was none of the torpor and jaded appearance that he found in some quarters. Matakana had a schoolhouse, while Warkworth made use of the public hall. Mahurangi Heads had to fall back on a room in a settlor's house. South

I am not quite sure where the Wliau school was located, but presume it was at Avondale. Again the public hall was requisitioned, and the residents had furnished it to the inspector's satisfaction. Coming South of Auckland, we find smaller schools and apparently even greater difficulty, iu providing buildings. There were nineteen scholars at East Pukekohe, where the teacher, after trying the church, had transferred the school to a room in her own house. Tho inspector notes that tho children were not sufficiently grounded in elementary rules of arithmetic, a defect he found not infrequent in schools conducted by lady teachers. West Pukekohe achieved originality by having a school in which church services were held on Sundays. They were providing for the future, for they had secured ten acres of land for school purposes. At Waiuku an old school long closed had been reopened in the church, but as the teacher was not allowed to shift the benches his workwas carried on under great difficulties. A combined school under one teacher" met in the morning on tho Great South Road and in the afternoon at Pokeno. During tho winter the Pokeno school was practically empty, and the inspector recommends its closing during tho wet season at least. At Newcastle ho found that the settlors insisted on runnirg tho school from nine to four with one short interval because " long school hours keep the children out of mischief."

At Hamilton twenty-nine boys and eight girls were present in the classroom in the Redoubt. There were no desks —only one table some eight feet long. Here the problem was too short school hours —from 9.30 to 2. Cambridge had twenty-two scholars and the school met in tho old military hospital. So tho record runs on through half-a-dozen more for which I have no space. A small beginning, but on it has been built the splendid edifice of our modern education.