TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. MONDAY, 9th NOVEMBER, 1936. TRADITION OR REALITY.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3831, 9 November 1936, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. MONDAY, 9th NOVEMBER, 1936. TRADITION OR REALITY.

TRADITION, the value of old association, was the keynote of the diamond jubilee celebrations at Paterangi on Friday. The occasion revived memories which surrounded the district school, and a wealth of tradition was recalled. There was linked in memory the days—aye, and the trials pf the pioneers who so successfully blazed the trail for later-day settlement. How markedly the district schoolhouse served as the focal point for all that memory cherished, for it became the foundation for those associations that began in childhood and lasted through the more arduous days that marked modem life. All of those cherished memories were revived under the healthful influence of reunion at Paterangi on Friday—truly an event day for many hundreds of people. Who can wonder if, on such an occasion, all cares of the workaday' world were dispelled and that the brief interlude for retrospect was fully indulged in '? And what more joyful experience could there be than the revival of school-day tales ? One of the sages in an earlier generation greeted the coming of the industrial era with wise counsel when he advised people to never outgrow the school age and to maintain the school spirit in the after years. That, at least, was the prevailing sentiment on Friday, and it would be well, no doubt, if it could intrude more regularly into our everyday affairs.

But behind it all there arose another thought—whether, in fact, what we have accepted as progress has really' been progression. Traversing the history of the Paterangi school, we find a greater spirit of comradeship than exists to-day—of simpler outlets for pleasure and more genuine understandings. In our modern conception such things are dismissed as being parochial. We admit those to have been “ the good old days,” even if life was harder, more arduous, and greater isolation was demanded. Yet those were the conditions which developed truer understandings and cemented the bonds of friendship. Today we know a wider horizon; we move about more freely; but we do not learn to understand in the way those early pioneers learned. Much that was then human is now material and commercialised. Well might we pause to consider whether the desire for progress has not outrun much that gave to the pioneer a truer appreciation of the real things in life. And around it all are the old-time school and the modern school. At Paterangi we saw how deeply tradition associates itself with a district school, and it could be readily understood how great the break will be if tradition is removed to a consolidated or central school. Sentiment is at least a powerful influence; yet, withal, we must accept the modern world as it Is. History is but a continuing experience of destroying established and cherished customs and replacing them in a new environment to conform with the progressive ideal. Nothing, it is said, can be static, and we must be prepared ever to move onward; and at this moment our task is to decide whether a school is merely an institution, a building to revere and treasure, or whether it is a centre of learning—a point at which the coming generation shall be equipped for a standard of life which is so different—so much more commercialised than the old pioneers fitted the present generation for. To allow tradition to hold us too tightly in its grip may in all probability be a serious injustice to those who are entitled to look to us to fully equip them for a life that is yet in the making.