REGIONAL SURVEYS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 March 1939, Page 6

REGIONAL SURVEYS

CENTENNIAL COMPETITION FOR SCHOOLS. WIDE SCOPE OF CONTEST. It is reported in the “New Zealand Centennial News” that, as part of the Centennial celebrations, the Government has set aside the sum of £2OO for a competition for which all schools throughout the Dominion are eligible to compete. After consultation between members of the Centennial Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs and the Education Department it was decided that the competition should be for regional surveys and that schools, and not individuals, should compete. Prizes will be awarded to schools, and pupils who have collaborated in producing a survey will have the satisfaction of sharing a prize which they will have collectively won for their school. The schools of the Dominion have been divided into seven classes and sections, according to size and type. Technical and secondary schools_form one class, Native schools another. The secondary departments of district high schools are divided into two sections, primary and intermediate schools into three, thus ensuring that all schools compete with other schools of a comparable type and size. But in practice there is nothing to prevent the best work being done by the smallest country school, as success in producing regional surveys for tnis competition will depend not so much on the equipment and facilities available as on the scope and intellectual timber of the whole conception.

Though teachers are expressly barred by the rules of the competition from preparing the regional surveys entered in the competition by their schools, they may quite properly serve on the editorial committee overseeing the collection and presentation of data for a survey, and their guidance may often be a decisive factor. The rules of the competition have been framed to give as free a choice as possible to schools in the choice of a subject for a regional survey. A school might choose the whole history 4f a district, though such a wide attack might prove unwise. It might equally well choose to write a survey of the present condition of an important local industry. Though inevitably most surveys will begin with or incorporate an historical outline, there is no express obligation on schools entering for the competition to write historical surveys.

Surveys may place their emphasis on present-day trends or on past episodes at the discretion of the entering school. The present, after all, alone gives value to the past. The surveys may be embellished with paintings, drawings, photographs, graphs, diagrams, or anything that the entering school considers relevant. Presentation of entries will be taken into account by the judges.