FEILDING HIGH SCHOOL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 178, 29 June 1937, Page 4

FEILDING HIGH SCHOOL.

VISITOR’S AVAIIAI PRAISE.

Dr. Alalherbe, Director of the Bureau of Social and Education Research of the Union of South Africa, paid an official visit to the Feilding Agricultural High School yesterday. Dr. Alalherbe, who was accompanied by Airs Alalherbe and Dr. Beebe, Director of the New Zealand Council of Educational Research, and Airs Beebe, and is visiting New Zealand in connection with the Education Fellowship Conference, was most impressed and declared the school to be “a wonderful institution.” He was welcomed by Air C. B. McClure (acting-principal) and manifested a practical interest in the varied educational training it offers. He was most enthusiastic for knowledge regarding the organisation and the correlation of the studies, and confessed to Air AlcClurc that lie hoped to be able to introduce a school of the type of the Feilding Agricultural High School in South Africa.

Dr. Alalherbe addressed the pupils and offered his congratulations on their -good fortune in having such a wonderful school. He explained the viewpoint of the South African farmer towards work and said that the abundance of cheap native labour had ruined the white farmer as far as doing his own work was concerned, and this attitude had extended to the rising generation, who were brought up in an atmosphere that all manual labour was the job of the native. Dr. Alalherbe recounted the answer given to a simple problem in ! one of the schools. The problem was what steps should be taken to remove a heavy rock from a highway. The child explained the_process of arranging the fulcrum and placing the lever in position, and concluded: “I would then get a 'nigger” to press down on the lever.” This attitude, he said, required to be broken down and ,a start was to be made in the new school, now being built, where no native labour would be permitted. In a short address, Airs Alalherbe -spoke of the heavy work that was performed by the women on the farms, and said that the menfolk seemed to think more of their stud stock than the burdens the women had to carry. She concluded by joining her husband in congratulating the pupils on their fine school.