II. AN EDUCATIONAL TOUR IS PLANNED

Te Ao Hou, March 1961, Page 21

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.

A public meeting was called, just after church on Sunday. A little coercion there, because it had been arranged that the bus would not bring the worshippers back home until after the meeting at the school was finished. The attendance was most gratifying; the meeting was told that the cost would be £6/7/6 per head, as well as a large school committee subsidy. A deposit of £2/10/- per head would be payable immediately. The meeting voted in favour. Furthermore, the head teacher suggested that all those children who wanted to go on the tour would need to have a full school uniform. For some years, successive head teachers had tried to persuade parents to buy uniforms for their high-school pupils, but so far always without success. There were some minor disagreements as to the style and colour of the uniform; some people had bought garments they imagined to be the uniform; in actual fact no two pupils dressed alike. A fashion parade was held at which the children showed off several different possible uniforms. The meeting again agreed that uniforms should be bought, chose red blazers, three-coloured monograms, all the usual accessories, but no boys' caps (for the sake of economy). All sternly insisted on black stockings for the girls. Raising the Money In this way we had agreement in principle for the whole plan, but it was still as uncertain as before whether the tour would really be supported. Community behaviour, as usual, was ambivalent. A few staunch supporters paid the deposits, others said they definitely did not have the money, someone sent in 10/-, one of the girls started doing odd jobs and bringing the head teacher such amounts at 4/3, 10/6, once every few weeks. The headmaster himself offered some boys odd jobs around his house at so much per hour, to encourage a spirit of sturdy enterprise in the earning of the necessary cash. But this, including the uniform, was now up to £25 per pupil. A circular was sent out asking people to list what uniform items they wanted the school to order for them. This produced some further, again inconclusive, evidence. The two things that gradually won over the people were probably these: in the previous year a group of school children from Matakana Island (near Tauranga) had visited Punaruku and been billetted in local homes. The children's desire to make a return visit fell within the Maori idea of valid sentiment, especially as everyone in the community knew the Matakana children and could visualise them. Furthermore, the head teacher and the school committee had managed to buy a film projector last year; the weekly films shown with this projector provided the only entertainment in the district. This had established much good will and confidence in school enterprises. A Programme Is Prepared Meanwhile the tour programme took definite form. The first night, in deference to the large Mormon majority, would be spent at the Church College, near Hamilton—the community was thrilled at this. The next night we would stay at a Maori meeting house near Rotorua, thanks to the help of the Department of Maori Affairs. Late in the third afternoon (a Friday) we would cross from Tauranga to Matakana for our return visit. As the head teacher attaches great value to regional geography, this part of the tour would be used for a study of three regions, Northland, the Waikato, and the Volcanic Plateau, with a look at the Hauraki Plains on the way back. Soils, farming, industries, and population centres could be looked at as we travelled, with special stops for hydro-electric stations, various thermal phenomena, and the pulp and paper mill at Kawerau. The tour was so timed that after a weekend at Matakana Island (for sports, a concert, and a free day), we would reach Auckland in the middle of the Auckland Festival. We would spend a generous amount of time on music, drama, opera, and exhibitions at the festival, and at the same time visit a few factories, offices, the museum, the planetarium, and the zoo. In this way the tour would serve practically all the subjects taught at the high school—geography, English, science, commercial practice, clothing (as a large office and clothing factory were on the schedule), Maori studies, music and art. It would give a varied picture of life in New Zealand. The Financial Effort Just before the end of the first term, nine deposits had been paid, as well as some partial deposits; others again had signed agreements to let their children go, but added no cash. The Department of Maori Affairs had provided a subsidy of £20. One could expect either a last-minute rush to pay in the necessary money, or last-minute community verdict to drop the whole idea. Both were equally possible. However, about this time the tide began to turn. One could begin to feel the pressure of community feeling in support of the tour. A social committee of the Ngati Wai began to raise money by subscription, and by organising a dance and a hangi, collecting £22. The first school uniforms arrived; as decided by the school committee, these were supplied on payment of only one-third deposit, the rest of the money being collected after the tour. The appearance of the first red, monogramed blazers in Punaruku convinced the people that the school really meant business. Children began to receive money from older brothers working in town and other absent relatives. Now the head teacher ordered uniforms on

a sale or return basis, for all the doubtful cases. The few European farmers in the district now began to offer jobs for more pupils, and so did the shopkeepers. The children whose money was assured helped the less fortunate in labour contracts, so that the majority of our high school pupils spent the holidays in manual labour—digging drains, catching fish for sale, etc. One smallish girl, but muscular and determined, took up scrub-cutting. School Preparation Meanwhile, school lessons had been planned to prepare pupils for what they would see—subjects like the pulp and paper industry were carefully covered. There was intensive training in football and basketball. An action song party was trained with the help of the secretary of the school committee, Mrs Piripi. As action songs are not part of the daily pattern at Punaruku, this took quite some effort, our programme by the end of the term being no more than a respectable minimum. We were fortunate in our leader, a husky fellow whom I shall call Wiri. Wiri, now in the fourth form, reads haltingly and only simple words; he is beginning to do elementary fractions in arithmetic. He is boisterous, and very sensitive to his place at the bottom of any school class. Yet he has a shrewd sense in quite a few things, as one notices in classroom discussions; he makes a big effort to learn what he can, and he beamed from ear to ear when he was given his first leadership role at the school. He has all the qualities of a good haka man: rhythm, accurate movements, spirit, humour and a good voice. He did a good deal to lift the others out of their natural listlessness. Also in preparation for the tour, the children were taught some European folk dances, which would be part of our concert programme. The Last Two Days The tour began on the third day of the winter term. Our two last days can only be remembered through a haze of excitement: much of this time was spent in teaching; in handing round special exercise books, geographic sketch maps, festival programmes; in sports and dancing parties, and more especially in talking about the things that were going to happen. There was an evening concert where the community (naturally, for a fee) came to see our artistic programme. But this had more than doubled in length and interest during the term holidays. Instead of the respectable minimum we had before we now had a most varied and entertaining collection of items, some old familiars, but mostly polished up for the occasion, solo songs, comic episodes, and above all, a most vigorous performance by about 12 of the children, partly troubadour, partly Hawaiian. The enrolment troubles were over; on the first day of the term the fees of 29 pupils were definitely settled, some others were more or less resigned to staying at home, but there were three very sad faces on Monday. That evening two families changed their minds, bringing the tally of children to 32. In addition, three teachers were going, the secretary of the school committee, another Maori woman, and—our last accession, signed up just before the bus left—Waitai Pita, aged 82, commonly known in the community as Father Christmas. He was considered very sickly, but his heart was conquered by the concert; furthermore his family, on his mother's side, originally came from Motiti Island, near Tauranga. He hoped to meet some of his mother's relations on this tour and to find out more about his ancestry. In this way the school had, before the tour began, won the heart of the community, and the whole high school was most impressively uniformed. Furthermore, in spite of devoting over £40 to festival tickets, the school committee was in a healthy financial state; it did not look as though its subsidy of the tour would need to be too substantial.