WILD OF FEILDING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 392, 27 December 1946, Page 24

WILD OF FEILDING

‘Tribute by

H: C

D. Somerset

5 tema weeks ago we reproduced in these pages a portrait of L. J. Wild, retiring headmaster of Feilding Agricultural High School, and drew attention to a talk on his work as an educationist to be

given by

H. C. D.

Somerset

on December 13. For those who may

have missed that talk we reprint it below.

I made my way to the large assembly hall at the Feilding Agricultural High School. I had half-an-hour to spafe, but the hall was already filled to the doors. It was prize day, but no ordinary prize day. There was a quiet eager tenseness about the gathering, with everyone ready to break into applause whenever the Head rose to speak. This was the end of a chapter in the school’s history, for it marked the retirement of its first headmaster, Mr. L. J. Wild, who has given 42 years to education in New Zealand, 25 of which had been devoted to Feilding. The boys and girls present had told their parents what Mr. Wild had said at the morning assembly of the school. "I have had a good innings; I have made 25: I now declare the innings closed." In those 25 years he has made perhaps the most comprehensive single contribution to the theory and practice of rural education that ‘thas ever been made in this country. I know of no one who has been more completely a practising rural philosopher.. I speak with some knowledge. I have kept in touch with the Feilding experiment for 20 years and for the past nine I have been assisting Mr. Wild in the working out of his plans for the Feilding Community Centre. In education Wild is a reformer, but no iconoclast. He has never had a desire to break down one system merely to build anSther; there has always been a background of conservatism in his work that holds to the well-estab-‘lished principles of teaching. Yet his philosophy is a growing one-alert all the time to meet a new need in a new Way. The Diverted Stream Not many are able to do that. When a schoolmaster sets out on his job, he embarks on a stream that has been flowing for a long time in a well-worn channel; it requires considerable effort to diyert a part of the stream and make it irrigate a desert place. That is what Wild set out to do and the first desert place he contemplated was the education given to adolescents whose lives would be spent on the land. His opportunity came in 1922 when ‘he was appointed as headmaster to the new High School in Feilding. In the South Island} Rangiora was developing a fine rural high school under J. E. Strachan, but so far little had been done in the North. As soon as he was appointed Wild visited Rangiora and consulted Strachan. The two men found they had been thinking along similar lines. Last night Mr. Wild paid a graceful tribute to Mr. Strachan to whom he owed much in the founding of Feilding School. Feilding was ready to experiment, The people had asked for and had obtained the nucleus of the present schaol. Wild tells how he opened the new school. Its four rooms stood in a 10-acre cow paddock; the weather had been bad and A T about this time last evening

some cows and sheep had sheltered in the porch of the new building. He ‘drove away the sheep, went out to the road, cut the wire fence, and let in 60 pupils who had gathered round. Infectious Energy Wild brought to the new _ school a good combination of qualities. A graduate in both arts and science, he had the scientist’s habit of testing ideas, of discarding the irrelevant, and of encouraging without talking over much about it the habit of clear thinking as the first essential in education. He had a good knowledge of the science and art of farming as well as high qualifications as a teacher and lecturer. Then he was a worker, a strenuous man who neither spared himself nor excused slackness in others. Whether he was explaining a passage from Shakespeare in the classroom, or expounding some principle of chemistry, or grubbing gorse on the farm, he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of infectious energy spiced with rare good humour. It- was_ characteristic of him that he chose for the school a Maori motto, Kia toa, kia ngakaunui, which means "Be brave, be. generous," and symbolises the virtue of courage along with good measure, pressed down and running over. It would have been relatively easy for Wild to develop a purely technical course in agriculture; that is, to teach how to make two fleeces of wool and two pounds of butter grow where only one had grown before. This was, of course, important and he knew better than most how to do it, but to the educator this was by no means enough. He had no desire to give country boys a premature training in agriculture; what he envisaged was a course which would draw its problems and its in-spiration-yes, and its poetry-from the countryside. Was it not a fact that the best we have in English literature. came from rural England? Art of Hitbeadey If problems were wanted, there were plenty to draw upon. Twentyfive years ago the country had come through the wartime boom in pricesg speculation in land had gone to absurd lengths, good farmers had sold out to live in the cities, the inexperienced had moved to the land to face falling prices and the-hope of selling again when prices should rise. This was against every principle: of good husbandry that Wild believed in. He had a regard for the . good earth that amounted to reverence; he believed in farming as a way of life. He saw vividly the need for the young to know the land, to respect it, to maintain it in good heart, to cultivate it and to plant it so that it not only nourishes the body but also "cheers the heart and delights the eye." He knew that the only way to learn the art of husbandry is by way of the slow process of education, and that the best way to get over the lack of understanding between\town and country is .that boys from the farms should work at

school along with boys and girls whose future work will lie in the professions, in shops, offices, and factories. To this end the Feilding High School became a multi-purpose school, equipped for all the needs of the town in secondary education together with its special equipment for rural studies. So the old 10-acre cow paddock looks very different to-day. I was down there yesterday. Among the gardens, lawns, shrubberies and playing fields, are a dozen groups of buildings, «the library, the assembly hall, the rooms devoted to:woodwork, metalwork, chemistry, biology, commerce, agriculture, animal husbandry, art, .music, needlework, home science, and all the rest of the studies designed for the varying needs of the adolescent boy and girl today. Here and there I saw a boy showing a parent around. One was explaining to his mother the best way to handle a tractor; another was pointing out that the pleasant-looking building with the white clematis running up to the balcony on the second storey is School House, and that the new one between the swimming bath and the library is Rangitane House, and in these two houses live some 130 boys from all parts of New Zealand. Another was explaining that the land beyond the playing fields is the 60-acre daity farm with its barns and milking shed, the metal workshop, the pigsties, the apiary, ‘the orchard, and the vegetable garden; and that a mile further away there is the 180-acre mixed fram where grazing, cropping and good land use are studied, and where the champion stud cattle, sheep and pigs may be seen. Minimum Equipment It must not be thought, however, that this isa luxury school. The buildings are plain to the point of austerity; the . whole merely represents what Mr. Wild regards as the minimum of equipment to achieve his purpose, which is no less than to provide the working tools of a community of teachers and ddolescents with living. and learning as the one common purpose. And when it comes to equipment we must not forget that every study should have its setting. Just as Wild needed a farm for animal husbandry, a laboratory for chemistry, 4 library for literature and a hall for music and the drama, so he needed trees and gardens for the nurture of the human spirits And then for the teaching of the first principles of democracy he used the whole school community-farm, gardens, classrooms, pupils, teachers and all -a world in miniature. the day after

the school was opened 25 years ago he instituted his well-known system of selfgovernment. School Government I sometimes think that the term selfgovernment is a misnomer, as it suggests that pupils are thrown entirely on their own resources, That is not so; no one is asked to assume responsibility beyond his powers, but every pupil after his first: three months at schvol is given through | his elected committees real responsibility for the running of the simpler phases of the school day. The system deals with real situations; it is not a play-way to democracy. But Mr. Wild would. tell you that democracy and self-discipline must be taught like every other cubject, and acquired by daily practice like every other skill, But everyone knows that equipment is not enough. It is the relation of person to person that counts in education. The mere presence of Wild makes life seem more intense, living more of an adventure. | The Community Centre Another problem Mr. Wild set him-. self to solve was that of the school-leav-ing age. School life was all too short, and those who left had so much still to learn, Teachers were saying that education was properly something that went on throughout life. If so, why not provide for it? So nine years ago he opened in the middle of the business area of Feilding the Community Centre for Further Education where the needs of adults could be met at times when their leisure permitted them to attend. With the opening of the Centre, Mr. Wild completed the organisation he considered necessary for the education of a community. It is now possible for a child of two years to go to the Play Centre to take its first steps into the world beyond the home, to continue through the primary school to the High School where he may take one of half-a-dozen courses, to go on again to the Community Centre to study art or drama or child psychology or world affairs and the like, to borrow books, to look at films or to participate in a’dozen other pursuits. In Feilding the genius of Wild has so provided that living need not be held up for lack of opportunity for learning. Wider Fields I must not forget one other factor that I think has contributed to the vigour of the school, and that is Mr. Wild’s service to the community not only in Feilding but to the country as a whole. With all his work he has found time to be concerned with the problems of higher education as Member of the Senate of the University. For many years he was President of the Royal Agricultural Society and is now its Vice-President and Treasurer. During the war he gave continuous service as a Member of the Primary Production Council; he is the National Patron of the Young Farmers’ Clubs. Thus, and in many other ways, he brings to the school a first-hand knowledge of affairs. Yesterday he said good-bye to the school with the good wishes of the present pupils, old pupils and residents of Feilding. He retires while still comparatively young in years, while still absolutely young in spirit and enthusiasm. My own hope, and that of his many friends and colleagues, is that he will find time now to write down the articles of his faith and the philosophy bekind his conception of the Education of a Community, so that where he has led many will follow.