ARCHERFIELD COLLEGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23491, 4 May 1938, Page 14

ARCHERFIELD COLLEGE

JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS The twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Archerfield College was celebrated last evening at a birthday party in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall. There was a large attendance of those interested in the school, and Miss Black, principal of the college, presided. The congratulations of the city were conveyed by the Mayor (the Rev. E. T. Cox). The school had broken new ground in education so far as this country was concerned, he said. This was the ideal of the family, so fully and so charmingly applied to the school life. It was the first step in the social reconstruction of the world Legislation could do a great deal in evolving the ideal state —the Utopia or the Arcadia of visions and dreams—but it was in heart quality that the real Arcadia existed. The school had focused its plan upon the ideal of socjal fellowship. All the members of the school, teachers and pupils, seniors and juniors, secondary and primary, were regarded as integral parts of a harmonious whole, and he knew of no finer outlook for the world and no better practice of the ideal than was found in the purposes of the school In the second place, the school had also broken new ground in its open air life. The pupils lived, moved, and had their being in sunshine. The success of that mode of life was evidenced by the fact that, in the periods of epidemics suffered by the schools of the city, Archerfield had had no part, but had remained free from contact. Archerfield, he concluded, had made history in education in the Dominion, but its greatest gift was the free, happy, comradely, and healthy life of the girls. Dr E. N. Merrington and Mr H. P. Kidson, rector of the Otago Boys’ High School, also spoke during the evening, and congratulated the college upon its attainments.