FAIRBRIDGE SCHOOL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4044, 6 May 1938, Page 7

FAIRBRIDGE SCHOOL

AN IDEAL REALISED. FIRST BOYS FOR MOLONG. With the arrival by the Orama today of 28 boys from England for the new Fairbridge Farm School at Molong, another stage will have been reached*in the development of the late Kingsley Fairbridge’s ideals, states the Sydney Morning Herald. The adoption of the Fairbridge scheme in New Zealand has been strongly advocated by Mr. W. J. Broadfoot. There are already Fairbridge Farm Schools at Pinjarra, Western Australia, and Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The Molong school is the third to be established, and the arrival of the first batch of boys may be regarded as its inauguration. The new school is a property of roughly 1500 acres called Narragoon, about three miles from Molong. Two cottages have been erected to accommodate the first batch of boys, and these, upon their arrival, will, in accordance with the Fairbridge tradition, be placed in the charge of “cottage mothers”—l4 boys to a cottage. The average age of the boys arriving to-day is 10 years. They will go to school at the Molong Farm and at the age of 14 will be given special training. They are the first consignment of about 100 British child migrants who are to be brought to New South Wales this year by the Fairbridge movement. The first batch comprises all boys, but later girls will be brought out and the Molong school ultimately will have accommodation for 300 boys and girls. All the boys arriving to-day were selected by the executive of the Fairbridge Farm Schools movement in England, the parent body, and they have all undergone a careful medical examination by the authorities at Australia House. The Fairbridge Farm School expresses an idea in concrete form. The idea was that of Kingsley Fairbridge, child of the South African veldt, and later a Rhodes scholar at Oxford—one of the few, indeed, who had met and spoken with the great Cecil Rhodes himself. Fairbridge saw the children of the slums of England’s crowded cities, the children in great barrack-like buildings, bereft of parents or separated, perhaps, for their soul’s good, and he longed to give them a chance in life, a place in which to grow to fullness of bodily and mental stature, a home life full of hope. He would, he determined, transplant them. Thus, the Fairbridge Farm School aims, first of all, at providing a genuine home atmosphere within which the children can grow and unfold naturally. Therefore the children are housed in cottage homes each with its house-mother. Each house-mother is chose for her motherliness, and each cottage is a home; not a barrack, or an institution, or a drill ground to turn out machines; but a growing place for souls. Then, it is a farm school. The children grow up in an atmosphere of farm life, in the midst of cattle, and fields, and gardens. They are trained for agricultural and domestic life by skilled men and women. They learn to dig their own gardens, to grow their own food, to cook it, and in all ways to fend for themselves. Self-help, self-reliance, selfrespect are fostered by the Fairbridge system. The Good Citizen. So, in home, school and farm, the children grow up in freedom, naturalness, usefulness. They live together in an atmosphere of affection; they become good serviceable citizens, enjoying life, enriching the Commonwealth by their characters and skilled industry, serving their fellows, and, in that service serving and pleasing God. Upon their leaving the Farm Schools, an elaborate system of after-care enables the careers of the boys and girls to be watched. Such is the Fairbridge idea, which has made the farm schools in Australia and Canada the most famous migration experiment of the present century. The progress at Molong will be watched all over the British Commonwealth. These ideas were not translated into practice without hard work. Fairbridge launched his plan in the Colonial Club at Oxford in 1909. With his enthusiasm, he inspired the meeting of 50 men, and the Society for the Furtherance of Child Emigration to the Colonies was founded that night. Thereafter, he communicated with, or interviewed, most of the leading men and women of England. Gradually he formed a small but influential committee, and, as soon as £2OOO (a small sum for such an ambitious purpose) had been collected, he and his wife set sail for Albany (Western Australia).