in the care of a relative—grandparent, uncle or aunt, or older sister. The parents come back home when they can, but often this is only rarely. Problems of the High School Just after the war the Punaruku Maori School was made a district high school, serving not only the people along the road but also Ngaiotonga, where a new development scheme of the Department of Maori Affairs has just been established. Until then, those families who could, had sent their children to boarding schools, where some of them did well and passed their School Certificate. Although some of these children had good careers subsequently, many preferred, as soon as they had finished their studies, to take up unskilled jobs where they felt secure in a familiar environment. The high school did not, when first opened, have the same prestige as the boarding schools, nor were the scholastic results of these first years sufficiently encouraging to change the opinions of the people. It is not hard to see why. The boarding schools had provided the children with a way of life specially planned to encourage learning—regular meals and bed times, constant supervision, fixed study period for homework, an atmosphere of learning, a blotting out of all those influences of village life which might distract the children. In these circumstances the average Maori child has a good chance of success at examinations, although difficulties may set in when the children leave the cloistered atmosphere of boarding schools for the outside world. The failure of the farms has left behind a distressing listlessness and sense of defeat; the absence of so many parents increases the children's aimlessnes; the community, with its traditions and its economy in a state of collapse, suffers from acute cultural impoverishment. The effect of this on the attainment of school children, although hard to measure, must be severe. It puts unbelievable limits on working vocabulary, as well as on familiarity with the outside world, while the listlessness that goes with such impoverishment inhibits rather than encourages the inborn desire to learn.

II. AN EDUCATIONAL TOUR IS PLANNED Purposes of the Tour How can a small district high school such as the one at Punaruku go ahead? First, it has to provide experiences that will stimulate the intellectual growth of the children, and somehow drive away the ubiquitous sense of failure that envelops them like a mist. Secondly, it must cope with the boarding-school complex, the feeling that the local school does not really provide competitive education. Both these purposes were served in the educational tour organised recently by the present head teacher of Punaruku M.D.H.S., Mr H. J. Bates. This tour was a landmark in the battle against cultural impoverishment, and in gaining the local people's esteem and admiration for the school. It produced a genuine change of attitude in the community, and as always, when a change of attitude has to be induced, the hardest work for this tour was in preparing for it, in bringing about a spirit in which the idea of the tour would be accepted and valued. Initiating the Tour The tour could only take place if it had the strongest support in the community. Without very positive support it would have been impossible to get the money. There is very little money in Punaruku. People's diet is very simple—bread, seafood, and the vegetables they grow. Apart from food, very little is bought. Yet when there is a cause close to the heart—a trip to the Latter Day Saints Temple in Hamilton, or some other thing greatly desired, money has a habit of coming to light everywhere. In such an atmosphere it would be virtually impossible to collect from parents even £2 for a school tour that was not really wanted. On the other hand, if the school could somehow win the people's hearts, the cost, whatever it was, would be no obstacle. Furthermore, the high school is small: even with the inclusion of Form II, only 45 pupils. Of these, most would have to come on the tour if we were to fill the bus. Support would therefore have to be general, it would have to come from the farmers with their sadly low production, from the absentee parents, from the casual labourers, from the pensioners even—and pensioners in Punaruku are numerous.