YOU BEGIN BY SWEEPING PATHS

Te Ao Hou, Summer 1953, Page 35

YOU BEGIN BY SWEEPING PATHS This homelike atmosphere is part of the Hukarere tradition. Miss Hunter, who has been Headmistress since 1948, told me: ‘The basis of everything we do here is to teach the girls to run their own homes.’ Wherever we went this practical approach was obvious. In the kitchen we interrupted the cooks-for-the-day, Hilda Otene, of Omahu, and Waiwai Ferris, of Ruatoria, as they were serving the vegetables for the mid-day meal. Neither Hilda, who wants to be a drill teacher, nor Waiwai, who wants to work in an office, thought it a waste of time to be learning to cook. This training for home life is not haphazard. It is carefully organised to fit in with the ordinary school programme. Miss Hunter explained that the girls change jobs every fortnight, that the turns are arranged with scrupulous care, and that the work gets progressively more difficult as the girls become more responsible. ‘The Third Formers begin with sweeping the paths; then they graduate to washing the dishes and laying the tables, and so on to the laundry and the kitchen.’ After an excellent meal in an astonishingly quiet dining-room a large team of girls cleared the tables and washed the dishes with the best good humour. I asked Horowai Ngarimu, who has reached the supervisory status of the Sixth Form, how the girls like these jobs. She laughed, ‘The Third Formers think it's a hard life, but they soon get used to it.’ Many of the aspects of homecraft taught at Hukarere are not domestic chores at all. During the day I saw several forms practising their bandages for a Red Cross examination. I watched the embroidery classes doing very involved work on tapestry stool-covers and fire-screens, and just missed seeing a large and beautiful baby doll getting her morning bath at the hands of the Mothercraft Class. Dressmaking is very popular. Form Five Lower was particularly busy, with their work in every stage from cutting to fitting. Some of these girls modelled their finished work for us, and others eagerly showed us what the rest of the school had done. Between the Third Form, where they make their own cotton gym-dresses, and the Fifth Form, where they learn to draft their own patterns, the girls make a man-tailored shirt to wear under their winter tunics: a baby's layette; dresses and shirts for their small brothers and sisters; and all kinds of clothes for themselves—from a petticoat to a tweed costume. Perhaps most important of all, they are taught to make an old garment over into something useful and attractive.