THE BUSH CHILD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9089, 14 May 1908, Page 3

THE BUSH CHILD.

The latest attempt at a solution of the educational problem of the backblocks child comes from the Minister for Education in New South Wales, who has aecided to institute an itinerant school in the Narrabri district. The teacher ia to travel from place to place in a covered vehicle, which will carry his school requisites and provide him with shelter and a bed at night if necessary. Curiously enough this travelling school bears the name of EtonHarrow! There will be four teaching stations, at each of which the children will be taught for a week in rotation. The second station is six miles away from the first, the third ten miles from the second, and the fourth twenty miles from the third. Mr Hogue believes that this is the first school of its kind in the world, and >f it is a success, he will extend the system to other parts of the country. That snch schools are wanted is quits certain, for their are districts in which even half-time schools are out of question, and in which, to quote the "Sydney Morning Herald," "numbers of children are growing ti maturity in a condition of absolute illiteracy, and thus quite unequipped to take their places in the community on terms of equality with the average of their fellows." The taacher of the Eton-Harrow school will be properly qaulified, and not, like many black-block teachers, a novice. He will be more than a teacher, he will be a missionary of civilisation to isolated families in the back country. In view of this isolation and of the fact that the travelling school cannot give continuous instruction in any one place, the "Herald" hopes that only men of superior type and decided personality will be chosen, and contends that the 1 country gtnarally should get, not the worst teachers, as it does now, but' the best. The policy of the Department should be turned round and the absolute best of the teaching service detailed for work in the country. "Country children have none of the benefits of contact and association which town children have, and that drawback of- situation should, as far as possible, be compensated for by superior attention at the hands of the State."