THE PRICE OF URBANISATION

Among our group there was one very simple boy, Morris, of high school age but unable to read. He has a sweet and charming nature; although he could not be expected to understand much of the goings on, he was enjoying himself immensely, and was a popular figure at Matakana Island, playing football well, singing a most amusing solo number, and riding about expertly on a fine horse.

Morris's shoes were far too small for him; the heels were almost worn away, and his feet were very painful.

While we were waiting for the Museum staff to meet us we noticed Morris had come in with bare feet, his first slip in etiquette since the beginning of the tour.

He was hastily sent back for the shoes but a little while later returned, still barefooted on the marble, and with a disarming grin—the bus had driven off, with his shoes on it.

THE MUSEUM

The two hours in the museum were far too short. It was here that so very many things we talked about at school could be actually seen; and seeing, for our pupils, is so terribly important, it is so very much the main method of communication. However, the education officer at the museum provided as many experiences as he could in those two short hours.

There was constant pressure to get the children to move from one showcase to the next. Wisely, our instructor told the children to put away their notebooks; otherwise we would never have finished our programme at all.

The children loved browsing through a room, noting objects of special significance to them, and asking questions. One of them discovered a piece of quartz containing gold; just the sort of quartz we had discussed when we passed the gold mine at Waihi. When we reached the Pacific section a pupil asked to be shown a breadfruit. Many congregated about anything connected with fish. The Maori collection, saved until the end of the visit, was studied with great interest. So was Rajah the elephant.

ACCOMMODATION AND MEALS

Our sleeping quarters were at Waipapa hostel. Many people, knowing the unpromising exterior, raised their eyebrows when they heard the address; however, the place is clean inside and very reasonably priced. Good sheets and pillows are provided. For any party not greater than 24 the hostel is very suitable, although one has to have meals and baths elsewhere; this, however, we found very easy to do. The advantage of Waipapa is that the whole party can stay together instead of being scattered through the city in billets. One gathers, in any case, that finding billets for Maori children is not easy in Auckland, although in Wellington and Christchurch, Maori schools have never found any difficulty.

Having settled in at Waipapa, we went to the Maori Community Centre for our evening meal. The centre is to be complimented on the excellent service it gives to school parties. Not only is the food very good and reasonable, but the hall, the musical instruments, the friendliness, all helped to make the centre a second home for the children and a most useful base. We spent every night from 5.30 to 7.30 at the centre.

We were visited there one night by Colonel Awatere, who is in charge of Maori welfare in Auckland. He told us about the activities of the Maori Community Centre and the services it gives to any of our pupils who might come to Auckland to live.

Each day 10 children were on kitchen and dining-room duty to help the cook at the centre. This, however, did not stop them from joining in all the excursions.

OUR PROGRAMME IN AUCKLAND

Our remaining programme in Auckland fell into three main sections:

1.	The industrial programme;
2.	The commercial practice programme;

3.	The cultural programme.

In addition we paid a quick visit to the zoo.

In the planning of the first two sections we received useful advice from the Auckland Public Relations Office. This office has a brief list of places it always recommends to wandering schools; on this list we found such establishments as the railway station, the post office, the Tip Top Ice Cream factory, and New Zealand Glass Manufacturers, all of which we visited. In addition, this office holds information on a large number of enterprises where visits are permitted.

For instance we wished to visit a clothing factory, preferably one employing Maori girls, so that our own girls could visualise the sort of vocation they might find in Auckland. The Public Relations Office was at once able from its records to name a clothing factory willing to receive school parties (the Cambridge Clothing Factory in Customs Street) and it was the same with all our inquiries.

As many establishments will not admit more than a specified number of children, it was necessary on three occasions to split the party into two sections; also, most firms will only accept parties on certain days or at certain hours, so that the whole tour timetable needs to be carefully planned. One factory we could not visit, because bookings are taken three months ahead.

THE FARMERS' TRADING COMPANY

Most valuable for our commercial practice students was the well conducted tour of the office of the Farmers' Trading Company. Here preliminary classroom work on the company and its office system would have been well worth while had we been able to get the necessary information in advance. The Farmers' have five types of accounts (cash, monthly, lay-by, time payment, and savings bank) and the system used for each type of trading is explained in full detail by a very competent officer. What impressed the children most was the microfilming of monthly statements—so many million statements in one small cupboard. Visitors are also shown the cycle billing system, the method of checking and analysing cash, the multigraph room, and the records system.

However, some teachers may find some difficulty in moving all of the young back-country visitors down the escalators, past six stories of sumptuous displays, into the open air.

THE CULTURAL PROGRAMME

The cultural part of our programme was the furthest removed from the past experience of the Punaruku children, and therefore the most challenging.

Our cultural programme was ambitious, from the viewpoint that the school tour would, for most of our children, provide the only opportunity for cultural experiences such as the Auckland Festival offers.

Furthermore it was hard to prepare the children fully for all the functions because the final festival timetable did not get printed until the very end of the first term, and the full programme, which provided essential background for teaching, came later still.

Here is the list of things we saw and heard: Stage Struck, one of the films shown by the Auckland Festival Society;

A chamber-music concert by the New Zealand Wind Quintet;

Brief visit to the Auckland Art Gallery;

The Waters of Kidron, a play by J. A. S. Coppard, produced for the Festival Society by John Thomson;

School Concert of the National Orchestra;

Madame Butterfly, presented by the New Zealand Opera Company;

Visit to an exhibition of paintings entitled “Life in New Zealand”, at the Society of Arts rooms.

In these arrangements we were given wonderful help by the Festival organisers, who also arranged concession prices.

Apart from Madame Butterfly, for which only 15 seats were booked, we took our whole group to all these occasions. Those who did not go to Madame Butterfly were taken to the Cinerama, a contrivance none of the children had seen before.

THE ART EXHIBITIONS

There was a wide divergence in the amount of advantage the pupils derived from the cultural functions. The paintings interested most of the children; art is an important subject on our school syllabus which children are encouraged to take for School Certificate. The children love illustrating poems, stories, or social studies notes; in any book they always study the illustrations most attentively. Furthermore, in the galleries they could walk around and go to what interested them; they did not have to sit still. We could profitably have spent more than the two half-hours we gave to looking at paintings. At the “Life in New Zealand” exhibition, William Jones, the Auckland artist, gave the children a short talk about the paintings shown.

BIBLICAL DRAMA

We found The Waters of Kidron to be a most suitable play. It was acted with professional skill. and in spite of its deficiencies, its religious theme was deeply significant to the children, partly because religion is the chief interest in the devoutly Mormon community and religious education is intensive.

It was interesting to find, however, that in spite of the many hours devoted to religious study, few of the children knew the story of Judas. The Headmaster told it to the pupils at the community centre just before the play started.

The chief action in the play was summarised with chilling exactitude in an essay by one of our fourth form pupils: “When Judas meets Anubis (a beautiful maiden devoted to the service of the Alexandrian Aphrodite) “he tells her he believes in one God only. Abubis tries to make him fall for her and think there are more Gods than one. Finally she succeeds. She then tries to find out how much money he has; in loving her so very much he becomes a traitor and helps to take Jesus away. When he returns he discovers that his so called sweetheart has gone to Rome with a soldier called Marcus. Knowing now that the money is of no more use to him, Judas goes mad and from that day to this many people say that Judas still roams the roads.”

Naturally, Coppard's over-simplification did not worry the children who loved to see the accomplished acting on the stage—Anubis, beautiful, deceptive, and evil; Judas, stupid, also bad, and finally punished; the High Priest, an even greater villain, and Marcus, just a happy-go-lucky fellow.

MUSICAL EDUCATION

The musical events were the greatest challenge because the children in our group are mostly by nature musical, but were quite unfamiliar with the type of music they heard at the festival. Not only that; the children are deeply influenced by jazz, rock-and-roll, and the spirit of youthful rebellion, the creed of which is centred in this music. Classical music is therefore apt to be listened to not with sympathy or even neutrality, but as the epitome of meaningless boredom: the “square” may be powerful—one has to live with him—but as music is the world of pleasure, he should be kept out of it.

Educators cannot help but clash with this confined world of pleasure. If they left it to evolve freely, it would be necessary to remove most school subjects from the syllabus. In music, as in other subjects, educators wish to widen the children's experience and to enable them to respond to music in more varied manifestations.

Our starting point was a lecture given at the Adult Education Centre by Mr Ronald Barker. The theme is his talk was “I am a square and I am proud of it”: he discussed the music we were to hear at the festival. It was followed immediately by the Wind Quintet. The programme contained quite a solid work by Hinemith and was perhaps in parts too difficult as an introduction. The environment was a hall in the Art Gallery, with good modern paintings: the public at this luncheon concert consisted mainly of musical connoisseurs and the atmosphere was far more intimate than at the usual evening concert. We found later that the concert made quite an impression on a number of the children—Wiri was the only militant objector. Morris liked the concert far too well, applauded like a cannon, and had to be stopped from tapping his feet to the music.

The school concert of the National Orchestra was, of course, far easier to understand. Again the reactions were mixed; the experience certainly did not stimulate any increased interest in the remaining musical event, Madame Butterfly, that same evening. The 15 seats we had were occupied with considerable reluctance and even feelings of envy towards those who had made the Cinerama.

When Morris found he was the only boy volunteer he hastily withdrew; our final party consisted entirely of girls. There was nothing doubtful about their reaction. They were deeply moved by the beauty and pathos of the whole performance; they felt sorry for the others who had not been there.

Since our return we have played to the children a recording called “The Adventures of Piccolo, Saxie and Company”, an amusing symphonic piece during which Victor Borge introduces, in story form, the instruments of a symphony orchestra. Before the tour this piece would hardly have been understood, but now the children were delighted by it; the instruments mean something to them now, and so does symphonic music. The experience laid a foundation for the appreciation of the mainstream of European music.

WE ALL BECOME LIKE LITTLE INSECTS

The tour had its Haroun al Raschid. When we were looking over the TEAL factory at Mechanics Bay, and admiring the delicate instruments with

which aeroplane parts are tested and repaired, an Auckland businessman, Mr F. Pidgeon, saw the bright red uniforms and heard of their remote and unusual origin.

He asked the head teacher: “Would your children like a ride on the plane?” He put what seemed to us quite a large sum of money on the counter and five boys, chosen by lot, went up the little Tourist Air Transport amphibian plane for a scenic tour over Auckland harbour.

Fortune was most perceptive in its choice. Among the five were three of our best boys and also the heroes of the tour. Wiri and Morris. The latter was in convulsions of excitement when the plane took off. The boys saw the whole of Auckland below them and our party became like little insects. Oddly enough, most of the children had seen the plane before as it often flies over Punaruku to the Bay of Islands.