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CHAPTER 22
Education

LABOUR came to office in 1935 with passionate belief that for all people education was the way to a better life. That Peter Fraser was Minister of Education both measured and sustained its importance. From overseas new ideas were coming, of education being broader, less academic, concerned not only with attaining standards and qualifications but with developing a wide range of attitudes, improving the whole of living; of working through energy created by programmes geared to abilities and interests rather than by routine, compulsion and competitive zeal. Such ideas were deeply acceptable to Labour, where most rankers were educationally under-privileged and most of the hierarchy self-read: they were to be grafted on to a system already geared to compulsory education.

The government's avowed purpose was that every child should have the education best suited to his abilities, free, in State-funded schools, for as long as he could benefit by it, with equality for town and country children. There should be new schools and equipment on a scale never contemplated before in New Zealand, staffed by teachers working with freedom, understanding and imagination. Inspectors were to be not dread judges but educational leaders, guiding teachers in the freedom and demands of the new style. The primary syllabus was being reviewed, with less stress on mechanical learning, more on practical means to promote real interest and knowledge. New text books, beginning with arithmetic, were being devised. The dreary pressure of the Proficiency examination, long the target of primary school effort, had been abolished in 1936, leaving some teachers confused, but with scope for livelier, more varied work. In the August holidays of 1937 educationalists of world standing, on their way to a New Education Fellowship Conference in Australia, lectured in Wellington to crowds of teachers and students, bringing first-hand news of developments and methods. Forthwith, at various centres, branches of the Fellowship were formed to see how far these inspiring ideas could be wrought into New Zealand's system.¹ Dr C. E. Beeby, leading local apostle of the new spirit, became Assistant Director of Education in September 1938

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and was to become Director in January 1940. More children were continuing into secondary education, which was no longer to be the privilege of the well-to-do or the academically able, but to be claimed by all who wanted it, from country areas as well as towns. In consequence it was not enough, as Fraser said, to provide more teaching of the academic type, designed for the gifted few: ‘Schools that are to cater for the whole population must offer courses that are as rich and varied as the needs and abilities of the children who enter them.’² Bold minds were beginning to question the relevance of ‘Matriculation’, the university entrance examination, which parents and employers had adopted as a universal measuring rod. As the country moved away from the Depression and money became more plentiful it was widely accepted that an increasing proportion of it should be spent on education. Advancing technology was freeing hands, beginning at such basic levels as the milking shed, which at once left more energy for education and created more need for it.

New and better buildings and more equipment were crucial to the aims. School building had stood still during the Depression, so that mere leeway was formidable, while education other than lecturing and written work with large passive classes vastly increased the need for new buildings or large renovations, to bring in light and colour, smaller classes, space for libraries, equipment and practical work. By 1939 new schools, both large and small, were appearing, shaped by the new feeling, while old ones were being re-modelled nearer to current standards.

In 1936, of about 2500 State primary schools, more than half had only one teacher,³ and while about 20 per cent of all boys leaving primary school had not passed Form II, of those leaving to take up farming, New Zealand's greatest single industry, roughly one-third had not passed Form II, one-third passed it and left and one-third went on to a year or more of post-primary schooling.⁴ To lessen the educational disadvantages of country children, small, isolated schools were being consolidated on larger centres, children coming in trains or motor transport to share better equipment, more varied and specialised teaching and more stimulating company. By 1939 some 280 small primary schools had been closed and consolidated;⁵ a system of boarding allowances, 7s 6d a week in 1937, rising to 10s in 1943, encouraged those in the most remote places to board near a main school.

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The war, with its shortages of petrol and of tyres, checked the consolidation though, save for some careful minor pruning in the worst years, 1942–3, school transport was not curtailed. Building was greatly slowed, though it did not wholly stop, either in new schools or renovations. But whereas capital expenditure on school buildings had risen from £62,183 in 1934–5 to £544,759 in 1937–8 and £851,726 in 1939–40, it dropped steeply to £207,390 in 1942–3, rose again to £477,393 in 1944–5 and bounced to more than a million in the year ending March 1946.⁶

Not only was building delayed; some children lost schools that they already occupied which were taken over by the Army or by hospital boards. When home defence forces were suddenly mobilised in December 1941, much faster than camps could be built for them, a number of schools were used: they had ready-made, dry parade grounds, toilet facilities, lecture rooms and dormitory space if needed, though many Territorials could sleep at their homes. Some were cleared by the time schools opened in February, or soon after, but some were occupied for up to three months longer. Thus at Dunedin during February and March the children of St Clair, Tainui and Musselburgh were squeezed into other schools for half-day shifts,⁷ and at Christchurch those of Sumner and Redcliffs were transported to Woolston for the afternoons.⁸

The most intensive invasion of schools was at Palmerston North where all but two of the primary schools were occupied until 6 March. The Education Department made a virtue of necessity with a ‘bold and imaginative’ experiment, concentrating on non-written work and promoting knowledge of the children's own community. The most junior classes were gathered into the two remaining schools and several halls; the rest, about 1700 children, were organised into groups, each with its own base, often in a home, with an empty shop as central headquarters, and various places as centres for activities such as music, handwork, art, nature study, physical education, library work, reading and films. There were visits to factories, railway yards, etc; swimming and ergot gathering; in the name of community training a ‘jobs bureau’ filled a good deal of time with tasks such as odd jobs for soldiers' wives, weeding public gardens, shelling peas or cleaning silver at the hospital, and distributing anti-incendiary sand to householders. It was all described in the Education Gazette and filmed by the National Film Unit.⁹ Training in responsibility and citizenship was claimed, though balanced education was

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not. There was general thankfulness that the children had been kept busy, though parents and the local paper also mentioned lack of real education and too much running about.¹⁰

Most schools were cleared of the Army between March and May 1942,¹¹ but those occupied by hospital boards as auxiliary military hospitals were held for much longer. They were usually commandeered in a crisis, such as an outbreak of influenza, but what hospital boards had thus taken they tended to keep. They were reluctant to build for what they deemed temporary needs, while the Army argued that further epidemics could occur at any time. Meanwhile, parents and educationists protested that an emergency did not last two years, and that children being scattered into classrooms here and there in other schools and into makeshift quarters in halls, for months and years, was undue sacrifice, especially when for long stretches the school might house a mere handful of sick soldiers or none at all.

New buildings were preferred as hospitals. Thus Hamilton West school was taken over in 1940 soon after it was opened, the children going back to their 70-year-old building where demolition had already started. For two months after Christmas that year the new school held no sick soldiers and in response to public complaint was handed back in March 1941.¹² In August it was commandeered again and remained so in spite of protest, till a deputation waylaid the Prime Minister at Frankton Junction in February 1943. He promised interest, and the school was finally restored in May 1943, after a new hospital had been completed.¹³

Other new schools were lost to their pupils for about a year. Palmerston North Intermediate, taken in December 1941, was vacated in March 1943.¹⁴ Marlborough High School was a military hospital throughout 1942, its pupils widely distributed, at one stage to 13 places.¹⁵ Until February 1943, when a large new block was completed at Auckland's Green Lane Hospital, Onehunga Intermediate School was converted to hospital use, largely by 66 crippled

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children, their own Wilson Home at Takapuna being a military hospital from February until the end of November 1942.¹⁶ Nor were mature buildings immune: at Whangarei 16 classrooms and two laboratories were occupied from the start of 1942 till the end of 1943.¹⁷

Maori secondary schools also came within range. The Auckland Star on 25 March 1942 commented that while the Maori had no greater right than others to educational facilities, their need was greater, and that St Stephens at Bombay, south of Auckland, in training Maori boys for leadership was already doing work of national importance. But St Stephens, taken over in February 1942, was not handed back till the start of 1945.¹⁸ Its boys were fitted into Te Aute and Wesley (Paerata) colleges and some State schools.¹⁹ In August 1942 Wesley, where a third of the students were Maori, was in turn taken over, not to be released till the start of 1944, some of its students going to Te Aute, the remainder to State schools.²⁰

Auckland Teachers' Training College at Epsom suffered a long occupation. For three weeks in June 1940, during an influenza emergency at Papakura camp, its students moved into the newly completed Mt Albert School; in the third term of 1941 in another epidemic, they were awkward guests at the University.²¹ In February 1942 the Hospital Board announced that the College would be retained indefinitely, the chairman, A. J. Moody, adding that the male students should be ‘popped into the Army tomorrow at 7s a day like the rest of the young men of military age. As for the female students, we need more VADs, or else they might be employed as pupil teachers.’²² The students, on £70 a year, replied that all those eligible for service were in camp or waiting to go, and that 7s a day would be princely.²³ They squeezed into the Normal School at Epsom, where rooms built for 35 children sometimes held 150 students,²⁴ while the children with their teachers were dispersed to other schools.²⁵ From mid-1942 the Training College building was

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not used as a hospital; instead it housed the Army's Northern District headquarters, plus several other Services' branches, which did not begin moving out till April 1944.²⁶

For the first years of the war, lowered rolls to some extent balanced reduction in building programmes and in staff: the birthrate fall in the Depression lessened the intake and towards the end of the war this trough was moving through upper primary classes. There were 58 757 children in infant departments during 1938; this number dropped to 53 808 in 1941; rose by 570 in 1942, reached 57 777 in 1944, 61 213 in 1945 and 66 698 in 1946.²⁷ In 1937 there were 207 879 children in public primary schools, 205 266 in 1939; from 1940–3 the population of these schools was steady at a little more than 204 000; it rose to 206 112 in 1944, to 209 786 in 1945, 218 490 in 1946 and 227 003 in 1947. In 1937 there were 27 931 pupils at registered private primary schools, 28 280 in 1939; rolls remained close to that figure until 1942, rose to 29 328 in 1943 and to 29 717, 30 401, 31 506 and 32 604 during the next four years. Maori village schools had 9642 pupils in 1937, 10 403 in 1939; their numbers rose to 11 009 in 1942 and to 11 274, 11 793, 12 190, 12 654 and 13 170 during 1943–7.²⁸

Training Colleges had been closed during 1932–5, but since then entrant numbers had been increased, aiming for smaller classes and a higher school leaving age. On 3 February 1940 the Otago Daily Times remarked that though there was a ‘considerable surplus’ of teachers, they had been placed in supernumerary and relieving positions; it had been hoped that the staffs of larger schools would be increased so that no teacher would face more than 40 children, but there had been no announcement on these lines; the government presumably was waiting to see how many teachers enlisted. On 6 May 1940 the Educational Institute pointed out that there had been little improvement in the size of classes since 1935. Then there had been nine classes of more than 60 children, now there were six; then there were 349 classes of 50 to 60, now there were 343; then there were 1007 classes of 40 to 50 children, now 1150.²⁹

Till mid-1942 education boards released almost all teachers who enlisted or were called up. This was broadly acceptable to the community, where teaching was rated by many as a ‘soft’ job. The teacher

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enlistment rate of 1914–18 had been high,³⁰ and in the 1940–1 flurry about disloyalty among teachers³¹ it was reassuring to point to large numbers in the forces. Meanwhile women teachers were told that they would best serve their country by remaining in their professions, resisting impulses toward more obvious war work.³² Married women who had retired were urged to return³³ and all teachers due to retire were asked to stay on; by February 1942 even superannuitants needed Cabinet permission to withdraw.³⁴

During 1941 the shortage began to show, notably among teachers of science and mathematics in secondary schools. By the end of that year the prospect of women teachers in even boys' secondary schools was contemplated, without much enthusiasm,³⁵ and during 1942 there were 27 in such schools, the maximum for the war.³⁶ There was also special difficulty in small, rugged schools, such as those in saw-milling districts, where rough conditions were considered unsuitable for women. In the post-Japanese entry call-up, education boards maintained that defence of the country came first, but by about May it was realised that many teachers could not be adequately replaced and that some called into the Services were merely doing routine clerical or guard work in home service camps.³⁷ Meanwhile, on a generation of children who were growing up deprived of skilled teachers through ‘apparent neglect and indifference’, war conditions were beginning to tell.³⁸

In mid-1942 the Nelson Board published figures showing that, of the total male primary teaching staff of 3833, no fewer than 2032 or 53 per cent were in the Services.³⁹ The Education Department reported that by the end of the year the forces had taken nearly 70 per cent of male primary teachers and 36 per cent of male post-primary teachers.⁴⁰ The Taranaki Board in June 1942, with 90 of

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its 152 male teachers in the Services and six schools closed,⁴¹ decided henceforth to appeal for each teacher called up.⁴² The Auckland Board followed suit on 1 July and within a month the Wellington, Wanganui and Nelson boards took the same stand, while Hawke's Bay would decide each case on its merits.⁴³ In the next few months other boards also began to appeal for their men: in Canterbury, for instance, 67 calls to service had been adjourned sine die by November.⁴⁴ At the end of October all teaching was declared an essential industry, preventing movement to other jobs and giving boards more power to direct teachers where they were most urgently needed.

Apart from actual shortage, the quality of teaching fell. Those about to be called up were restless. In some schools there was a succession of relievers. Young, inexperienced teachers were suddenly dropped into responsibilities for which they were not prepared. Teachers emerging from retirement, their experience rooted in the chalk-and-talk routines of yesterday, found changes in the syllabus, lack of guiding text-books and children used to other methods, and frequently distrusted the innovations. Moreover there was scarcity, sometimes temporary, sometimes lasting, of almost everything—of paper, chalk, pencils, books, handwork, art and sports materials— which demanded economy and improvisation. A child of the time remembered, some 25 years later: ‘Our crayons were ghastly, all scratchy, and they did not colour well. School chalk drove the teachers mad. It was not of pre-war standard, but very gritty’.⁴⁵ There was even an acute shortage of school cleaners, long regarded as inferior persons. The Minister, H. G. R. Mason, when this problem was laid before him, bracingly answered that we learnt by doing, that if children kept their schools clean and tidy, without the notion of leaving certain types of work to poorer people, they would bring better attitudes to the care of their cities, and the community would be less troubled by the ridiculous divisions of snobbery.⁴⁶

Was education a social necessity or a luxury to be abandoned in stern times? In the community, some regarded education as expendable or rather ‘postponeable’; others felt that it would be nonsense, while fighting for the children's future, to neglect them meanwhile. Many mothers, always those most involved with the upbringing of

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children, felt that this field should be their main concern in the war effort. Leaders in the Education Department believed deeply that education, especially the new education, was so much part of the moral and political principles for which the war was being fought that it must be maintained amid rival demands.⁴⁷ Large sacrifices, of buildings, teachers, equipment, were accepted as inevitable, but in many minor ways the Department tried to compensate, to push on in the direction of enlightenment.

A notable instance of this was the School Library Service. In 1941 the grant for school libraries was raised from £5,000 to £15,000, with which well chosen books were assembled and circulated by the Country Library Service, concentrating first on country schools. For the first two years a small charge was made to each school, but thereafter the service was free. At the end of 1942 it was supplying 22 462 children in 402 schools; by 1945, despite the difficulty of getting books from overseas, it had 124 782 books serving 63 923 children in 1042 schools.⁴⁸

Another area of advance was in physical education, hitherto a cinderella subject, dependent on the enthusiasm of individual teachers. In August 1939 an English expert, P. A. Smithells,⁴⁹ was appointed superintendent of physical education, a new position, and brought in a system based on that adopted in England in 1933. He toured the country lecturing, showing films and holding short courses, explaining to teachers a system built on running, jumping, catching and throwing balls. This was designed to foster general sporting activity, and was broader and more varied than the previous staple, ‘drill’, jerky movements performed in unison by squads of children. Specialists were trained, both men and women, and, though most of the men were rapidly taken into the forces, their skills proved useful there in remedial and other training. The rest, from centres scattered over the country, zealously worked out into far-flung schools, arranging their own transport by milk and timber lorries, Automobile Association men, school nurses, commercial travellers, road services, slow local trains, even railway jiggers, let alone boats, bicycles and horses. Though often short of such basic equipment as balls and rubber-soled shoes, they spread their gospel of movement and even within the war years built up physical education from scratch

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to a section with a staff of more than 50, with national recognition and, in 1944, a large, well-illustrated syllabus.⁵⁰

Various teaching aids, now wholly taken for granted, were developed in those years. A library of film strips was built up, largely of British documentaries and the National Film Unit's portrayal of New Zealand industries and other endeavours. Broadcasts to schools were extended to three-and-a-half hours a week, bringing the voices of experts in music, speech training, social studies, into even remote schools, to relieve and stimulate both teachers and pupils. Some materials for arts and crafts, such as crayons and raffia, were no longer imported, but substitute activities were found with modelling clay and the spinning and weaving of wool. Spindles of varying simplicity were described and illustrated in the Education Gazette.⁵¹ Spinning wheels, costing £2 10s. each, and looms could be obtained from the Department, which also contrived local production of manipulative toys and number material for the infant rooms.⁵² The Education Gazette, compulsory reading for every teacher, carried into every staffroom official information on all these improvisations and innovations. Biennial grading, designed to make the work of inspectors more flexible, with more opportunity for advice rather than judgment, was introduced in 1941. The school milk scheme, begun in 1937 to give a half pint of milk daily to each child who wanted it, was widened, despite a few suggestions that by cutting it out petrol would be saved and more butter and cheese sent to Britain. As the export of apples was checked by lack of refrigerated shipping, surplus apples were bought by the government from 1941 to 1945 for free distribution to schools during March and April.

Nor were kindergartens forgotten. Though outside the State system they were esteemed by the educational élite and catered for children between the ages of three and five years, when most started school. At the war's outbreak they were modestly established on voluntary contributions plus government grants: £1 for £1 building subsidies and capitation allowances. At the end of 1940 there were 39 kindergartens and 1810 pupils.⁵³ Teaching here was a rarified vocation: two years unpaid training and very low pay thereafter. By 1941, with only 31 trainees, prospects were desperate, and with

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more mothers going to work kindergartens were more needed than ever. Government bursaries for trainees, beginning in 1942 at £50 rose to £70 in June 1944, both plus boarding allowance of £25; grants for improved salaries were made from 1943.⁵⁴ By the end of that year there were 2 182 pupils in 46 free kindergartens, and 80 trainees; by the end of 1944 there were 2483 children in 53 kindergartens with 72 teachers in training.⁵⁵

The voluntary organisation of pre-school play centres, which began in 1941, was also part of the new education movement that seeped in from overseas, beginning with a few crusading women who found others ready to perceive its advantages. The purpose was to help children from 18 months to five years develop happily through individual and community play under trained supervisors, plus mother helpers, with larger toys than many parents could afford, and company that neighbours and friends might not provide. Mothers would have a refreshing break once or twice a week and the fellowship of shared experience. War conditions, with husbands away or overworked and petrol restrictions curbing family movements and pleasures, heightened needs all round. Play centres, usually held in church halls, came from the co-operative efforts of mothers, who organised on committees, paid small fees (2s 6d a month, plus 3d per child per day, was usual) and helped to provide toys and equipment. In rotation mothers helped the supervisors, improving their own knowledge of child management. Equipment and standards were very like those of the Free Kindergartens, which generally were very helpful, and several supervisors were kindergarten trained. Small loans from the New Education Fellowship bought equipment.

Play centres first appeared in Wellington,⁵⁶ among a group of enthusiasts that included the wife of the Director of Education and wives of training college and university teachers. Two such, Mrs Joan (F. L. W.) Wood and Mrs Olga (P. A.) Smithells, organised the first centre, opened in a Karori church hall by Mrs Janet Fraser on 24 April 1941, and within two months another group was working in Kelburn. These women were good publicists: through leaflets, a few broadcasts, and personal visits, they convinced others of the benefits of combined effort, in a society that generally believed that it was the duty of a mother who did not happen to live near a kindergarten to bring up her pre-school children unaided. A central

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organising body was formed in Wellington, and during 1941–2 centres appeared in several suburbs and in other towns, notably Christchurch and Palmerston North where the pattern was repeated.⁵⁷

In Christchurch, within a few months of Wellington's start, five women fired by Olga Smithells founded an impressive central committee, by no means limited to women, with the declared purpose of meeting the war-accentuated needs of mothers and children. By the end of 1942, they had four centres in action.⁵⁸ Plunket-organised crèches co-operated with two of these play centres, taking care of babies nearby on the same afternoon, so that mothers could have an afternoon clear of all their young.⁵⁹

By 1944 Wellington and Christchurch each had 10 centres, Palmerston North had five and there were isolated groups in such places as Hanmer, Runanga and Raetihi. Auckland's first centre, which opened at Remuera shortly before Christmas 1944, found that despite initial enthusiasm only modest use was made of it; at about the same time, a group began in Dunedin.⁶⁰ For various local reasons, individual playcentres were sometimes short-lived, but the movement itself continues strongly to the present day.

Accrediting for university entrance was a major innovation during the war years. ‘Matric’, normally taken at the end of a narrow academic three-year course, had long been accepted as the necessary stamp of educational attainment; consequently many with no inclination towards university toiled with pre-university French and science and mathematics, to their own frustration and their examiners' dismay. For them, the Education Department in 1934 had instituted the School Certificate examination on a much wider range of subjects as the hallmark of satisfactory secondary education, but it failed to capture public imagination and, although its standard was no lower, it remained a poor relation of the matriculation examination.⁶¹ It was thought that the impasse could be resolved by the shools accrediting those fitted for university, leaving School Certificate as

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the dominant visible target. Debate had been going on for years between schools and the university, and in 1942 agreement was reached. Joyfully, in 1943 the Education Department announced release from the fetters of ‘Matric’; broad-based School Certificate would come into its own, while those intending to go to university, after a further year's study, would be accredited with, or if not sit, the University Entrance examination, at a higher standard than before. Secondary schools would henceforth fully realise their double purpose of preparing a few students for university and the majority for immediate life and work in the community.⁶² The new system would become fully operative in 1945.⁶³

School Certificate certainly came into its own, but its enthusiasts could not have guessed how persistently parents and employers even 40 years later would still cling to University Entrance, accredited or otherwise, as the desirable seal of secondary education.

Raising the school leaving age was a long-standing Labour target which the war might well have postponed. Legally, with certain exceptions mainly covered by the Correspondence School,⁶⁴ children had to remain at school until 14 years old. But a child who had reached 13 years could leave school by obtaining a primary school certificate that he or she had passed Standard VI (Form II).⁶⁵ The Education Amendment Act of 1920 had raised the age for compulsory attendance to 15 years but operation of this clause was deferred; it could be made effective by an Order-in-Council. During 1942 the Minister of Education had occasion to state that, while the government hoped to raise the school leaving age when the war was over and thereby prevent the employment of children under 15, this would not be possible in the current shortage of buildings, staff and equipment.⁶⁶ But various public pressures, plus the government's own inclination, worked against postponement.

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One pressure was the increasing public uneasiness about employment of young teenagers in factories. There were no records of the numbers and ages of those who, without legal impediment, started regular work on farms,⁶⁷ in shops and offices, or domestic duties. But by the Factory Act 1922, a boy or girl under 16 could not be employed except with a certificate of fitness from a factory inspector; only in special cases, authorised in writing by the inspector, could those under 14 be employed, and then not on, or close to, machinery.⁶⁸

In 1934–5, 791 boys and 2011 girls under 16 were certificated for factory work. As the Depression receded their employment, along with others', increased, to 4462 (1890,2572) in 1936–7; dropped by about 300 through the next two years and rose again to 4546 (2139,2407) in 1939–40. The following year there were 4199 (boys 2119, girls 2080), of whom 440 (187 boys, 253 girls) were under 14 years, and in 1941–2 there were 4298 (boys 2153, girls 2145) of whom 480 were under 14.⁶⁹ During 1942–3 the certificates issued dropped by a thousand to 3263 (boys 1706, girls 1557),⁷⁰ possibly on account of growing comment.

For some time a number of schools, particularly technical schools, had reported that pupils were leaving early for industry.⁷¹ Many employers preferred younger lads to those approaching military service age,⁷² while the clothing trades preferred girls to start at 15 to 17 years, the age when they would learn most quickly.⁷³ Reports circulated of teen-aged workers getting £4, £5, or even more, per week. These wages often proved to be exceptional or for older workers, but overtime and piecework, plus employers' keenness to get and keep labour, undoubtedly increased youthful pay packets.⁷⁴ These were further improved by not being taxed: National and Social Security taxes, at the rate of 2s, rising to 2s 6d in May 1942, out

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of every £1 earned, were not charged on the wages of those under 16 years.

Belief that the young were unduly affluent was widely linked with generalised complaints about juvenile delinquency. Vocational guidance officers and other concerned people deprecated early entry into dead-end or short-term jobs: ‘any mass use of young people for stop-gap or abnormal activities will but provide a problem in later years.’⁷⁵ They also feared that boys and girls too immature to make progress at work might become job drifters.⁷⁶ A senior magistrate, J. H. Luxford, said that some girls who left school early became social problems, again through immaturity; their numbers, though not large, were ‘great enough to be alarming’.⁷⁷

The Press, towards the end of 1941 and under the heading ‘Child Labour’, stated that there were now 6000 fewer children in primary and intermediate schools than in 1936, gave the numbers of those under 16 certificated for work in factories between 1934 and March 1941,⁷⁸ and stressed that a substantial proportion of these underage workers were also under 14 years.⁷⁹ More attention was given to the topic a year later when Dr A. E. C. Hare, in his first survey of labour problems, published in December 1942, stated that during the previous five years, 21 000 persons under 16, of whom a ‘not inconsiderable number’ were under 14, had entered factories. In some of these, wartime extensions of overtime made it possible to work a boy or girl of 14 or 15 years 52 hours a week, for weeks on end, which could lead to long-term health damage; he urged systematic medical examinations of such young people.⁸⁰

In the Auckland Star of 15 December 1942 a full column article deplored the employment of children in blind alley jobs as wholly unsatisfactory.⁸¹ A week later the Star, quoting Hare, held that the employment of children was bad from almost every point of view. At an age when they should be at school they were trying to fit into industrial conditions shaped for adults; the Labour Department's assurances of ‘careful inquiry’ into health aspects was unconvincing without medical inspection; getting too much money too soon, especially with military service looming at 18, was making young men reckless, bringing some of them into the courts, and would make discontented misfits of them when war pressure eased. Sometimes

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the war was an excuse for tolerating conditions that could be avoided, and while perhaps the employment of children could not be prohibited, should they not spend part of the day or week at a technical or trade school?⁸² A correspondent, while generally deploring that children were being roped in to win the war, added that real child slavery existed in country districts, in farmers' own families.⁸³ The Press also quoted fully from Hare, and pointed out that the Factory Act intended factory work for children under 16 to be exceptional, but for some years, even before the war, the Labour Department had been issuing under-age certificates as a matter of course, without probing individual cases. Its last report claimed ‘careful inquiry’ to ascertain that the health of workers was not impaired by overtime, but ‘it is not indicated how the inquiry was carried out.’ Moreover there seemed to be a conspiracy to ignore child labour; in the last five years no Minister, member of Parliament, trade union man or industrialist had spoken against it. The war was not an excuse for this silence, and even if the war made child labour inevitable, it was still possible to do much more to safeguard the health of factory children and to encourage them to continue their education. A nation that pushed a social problem of this magnitude out of sight, while claiming to lead the world in social services, was open to a charge of hypocrisy.⁸⁴

Two weeks later the Press printed an article, not an editorial, which suggested soothingly that all young persons obtained jobs through the advice of the Youth Centre, a branch of the Labour Department. ‘Many wish to go into industry and are best suited for such work’; girls mostly went into light occupations such as sewing or leatherwork, and ‘among the girls there are always those who prefer routine factory work, but wherever possible they … receive training in some particular branch of a trade.’⁸⁵ But it was the Press editorial of 23 December which in March 1943 stirred the governors of Christchurch Technical College, who had already asked the Minister about raising the school leaving age.⁸⁶ ‘War or no war, this is a matter that should be hammered away at,’ declared the chairman, and another member said that the country was getting back to child slavery. They consulted Vocational Guidance officers, who had long advocated that no child, irrespective of attainment, should leave school before reaching 14 years. One officer said that in Christchurch since the end of the school year in December at least 43 girls

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of 13 had left school, 28 going to work, mostly in factories and workrooms, and 15 staying at home, while 50 aged 14 years had gone to work and 18 were at home. Another reported that boys of 13 were going to work, and that of 819 primary schoolboys interviewed 113 intended going to work, 66 were uncertain and the rest were returning to school.⁸⁷

In the House on 8 March 1943 Mrs A. N. Grigg referred to Hare's report and to the figures on the Christchurch girls; she added that it was the bright child, able to benefit from fuller education, who could gain a school leaving certificate early.⁸⁸ The Prime Minister remarked immediately that he would take Hare's report with caution, he knew some of these authorities and experts too well. A few days later he added that while the numbers concerned were decreasing, it was not desirable that children under 14 should work in factories. He agreed that it was the clever ones who could leave school earlier. He regretted that the leaving age had not been raised, owing to shortages of buildings and teachers, but hoped that it would happen soon.⁸⁹ On 20 March the Minister of Education went a little further: shortages had so far precluded change, but to wait for surpluses might be to wait for ever and the Department was considering means of introducing the change gradually.⁹⁰ Amid the educationists' stir, one parent publicly explained the advantage of early job-getting. Advising boys to learn a trade or go to secondary school might, he wrote, be theoretically right yet practically wrong. Many families with one breadwinner were too pinched to finance further schooling, and factories had all the apprentices they could take. ‘As a messenger a boy can earn 30s a week to begin with, and acquires an inkling of business, learns business terms and business manners, and after a while has a clearer idea of the sort of trade he would prefer than he ever would at school. All this is frowned upon, to the disadvantage of needy lads.’⁹¹

Public opinion, encouraged by like proposals in Britain, was moving strongly towards the raising of the school leaving age,⁹² though, according to one witness, some people were ‘using the child as a political weapon to condemn the Government.’⁹³ The Woman's Weekly of 1 April declared that the shameful facts disclosed by Hare and Mrs Grigg should have moved public and political opinion to

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indignant action. The quarterly report of Vocational Guidance officers in Christchurch spoke firmly for raising the leaving age; there were few apprenticeships, as these were in proportion to the journeymen employed; too many boys, some only 13, were going to work direct from primary school, encouraged by the reluctance of employers to take on lads close to military age: their blind alley jobs would fail them when servicemen returned.⁹⁴ The governors of Christchurch Technical College, still hammering, adopted resolutions strongly condemning child labour and demanding longer education.⁹⁵ Their views were supported by the Press on 5 April and echoed by a school committee in Oamaru.⁹⁶ Several branches of the Educational Institute, including those of Auckland and Hastings, added their voices,⁹⁷ as did the Business and Professional women of Wellington,⁹⁸ while the Canterbury Manufacturers wanted the raised leaving age to be linked with vocational guidance and specialised trade training.⁹⁹

Perhaps the last straw was the casual disclosure early in May, in Wellington's Supreme Court, that a 16-year-old girl had already been working for three years in a soft goods factory, having simply ‘got a job there’. The Crown Prosecutor was ‘rather horrified’, inquiry was suggested,¹⁰⁰ and the Dominion held that this, coupled with the recent warnings of a Canterbury educationist that New Zealand was in danger of getting back to child slavery, would cause sharp misgiving. The public would want assurance that special watch was kept on child employment in the labour shortage, but singling out factory work was an anachronism: the problem was wider and pointed towards raising the school leaving age.¹⁰¹

On 11 May 1943 the Minister of Education told the Educational Institute that in the coming session of Parliament a one-year increase would be made, and on 22 June he told Parliament that the school leaving age would be 15 from the beginning of 1944. Fears of juvenile delinquency, he said, had not so far been realised, but all the conditions for it existed; an increasing number of young adolescents were missing the discipline of normal home life and it was essential for the school to keep its grip on them during these critical years. The change should be made now while the need was greatest and, though makeshift accommodation might be necessary for a few years, simple, prefabricated, portable rooms could be contrived to

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meet needs as they appeared. Not least of the problems would be the devising of courses suitable to non-academic 14-year-olds.¹⁰²

Early in August a bill was introduced with two main purposes: the school leaving age would rise to 15; education boards, with ministerial approval, could set up kindergartens as there was now more kindergarten work than the pioneering Free Kindergarten Association could handle alone. The bill was well received. Doidge said that the Opposition welcomed it, but with two or three other speakers he deplored that it did not provide for religious training, as did Britain's current bill. ‘They are determined at Home that God shall not be shut out of schools,’ he said, and quoted Churchill saying that religion was the rock in the life and character of the British people on which they had built their hopes and cast their cares, a fundamental element that must never be taken from the schools.¹⁰³

Fraser managed, with affable agility, to sidestep claims that government should recognise the growing feeling that religion should have a definite place in the school syllabus. The rebel ex-Labour member for Napier, W. E. Barnard, gave notice that when the bill was in committee he would move an important amendment relating to secular education. Fraser thanked him fulsomely for this information. There would not be time in the closing stages of the session for this important question to be properly considered, and therefore the bill would be dropped. Its main purpose, raising the school leaving age, could be achieved by Order-in-Council, and the religious issue could be discussed along with others at an educational conference proposed for 1944.¹⁰⁴ The kindergarten provisions were silently sacrificed.

Agitation for religion continued, drawing a good deal of strength from the Churchill utterance. In October 1943, the Wanganui Education Board believed that it should give the authorities a lead by urging legislation for the teaching of Christian principles as part of the school syllabus.¹⁰⁵ It was backed by the Dominion of 27 October

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and by several education boards, including those of Auckland, Wellington and Otago,¹⁰⁶ and in July 1944 the Dominion Federation of School Committees wanted the secular clause deleted and religion written in.¹⁰⁷ The Educational Institute, on the other hand, issued a pamphlet that saw the teaching of Protestant religion in State schools as an entering wedge that, followed by Roman Catholic and other pressures, might split the education system from top to bottom.¹⁰⁸ The promised education conference in October 1944, after long and close debate, decided that there was insufficient representative authority and unity for it to make any recommendations.¹⁰⁹

After 1 February 1944, by Order-in-Council, all children up to 15 years had to attend school and it was an offence to employ them in school hours. Certificates issued to factory workers of 15 and 16 years numbered 1549 (881 boys, 668 girls) in 1944–5 and 1822 (919 boys, 903 girls) in 1945–6.¹¹⁰ Tabled figures show that secondary school rolls had already risen in 1943 by 3055 and that the increase more than doubled in 1944.¹¹¹

Mason claimed in 1945 that the change had been achieved with less difficulty than he had anticipated, although it had been accentuated by more children staying at secondary schools beyond the raised leaving age; pressure was most serious in Auckland, due to the population drift to war industries.¹¹² There as elsewhere increased numbers had been met by prefabricated classrooms and the planned

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distribution of children to schools where classrooms were available.¹¹³ However there were reports of Auckland's grammar schools, besieged by over-many applicants, applying Otis intelligence tests to select the most promising, which the Minister declared was not a proper use for such tests.¹¹⁴ Primary schools, too, were over-crowded: children were shuffled to classrooms here and there, taught in corridors and basements and, at Epsom Normal School, not yet vacated by Training College students, in a marquee. Cartoonist Minhinnick showed Fraser in a mortar board and gown, facing little girls: ‘and next, children, we come to the future imperfect tense— I shall be having a school’.¹¹⁵ This was not a shortage new to Auckland in 1944: in some primary schools, such as Dominion Road and Orakei, classes had resorted to shelter sheds as early as 1942.¹¹⁶

Although 45 prefabricated movable classrooms, 27 ft by 24½ ft, which could take 50 pupils, were ordered for Auckland and 35 for Wellington,¹¹⁷ these were not immediately available; at Wellington Girls' College they were not in running order till 1945.¹¹⁸ At Auckland where three new intermediate schools were planned one of these and a new technical school, both at Avondale, were to be buildings

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erected as a United States naval hospital, with future use as schools in mind. These were not available until 1945.¹¹⁹ Other problems were shortages of text books¹²⁰ and of teachers. School boards now pressed vigorously for their teachers to be returned from the home forces, some talking of scandalous waste.¹²¹

Accommodation difficulties were not limited to Auckland and Wellington: for instance, Cambridge school was reported to be hopelessly over-crowded, and at Te Awamutu children were taught in a corridor and a small disused cloakroom.¹²² Dilapidation in such old schools as Thorndon in Wellington went unchecked.¹²³ It was clearly impossible during or just after the war to bridge the gap between existing buildings and growing school rolls plus the more spacious demands of changing education methods. A Waikato spokesman for the Educational Institute pointed out that the classroom space per pupil was often less than that allowed by the Agriculture Department for three hens.¹²⁴ Reports of over-large classes continued through 1944, there was renewed perturbation in 1945 and although, as mentioned earlier,¹²⁵ building programmes expanded greatly in 1945–6 and thereafter, buildings continued to drag after needs.

On the attitude of schools to the war itself, the Education Department repeatedly gave high-minded advice: these children would have to shape the world after the war and should not bring to this task minds warped with hatred, pride and intolerance. In October 1939 the then Director, N. T. Lambourne,¹²⁶ stated that mobilising public opinion through propaganda was part of modern war. Children could not be protected from all knowledge of the war but their minds should not be twisted, as were those of German children with lies, hatred and intolerance. The teacher should act as a buffer, passing on at each stage, from the infant room to the Sixth Form, what burden of knowledge he or she judged that the children could and should bear. In the primary school it was better to say too little than too much, but explanations would be needed to steady the children against half-understood statements by adults, newspapers, radio. At no stage should the teacher generate hatred of the German people, yet children should believe that freedom was worth fighting

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for, that democracy offered hope for a decent life, and believe that Britain had strength both to win the war and to make a peace without bitterness or injustice.¹²⁷

Six months later the new Director, Beeby, also said that the teacher could not ignore the war, but should act as a buffer between his pupils and the beastliness of war, to produce a generation without mental scars, though willing to fight if need be. Children should not be used for war purposes as in Axis countries, but true democratic values should be brought forward: the passionate love of freedom, love of reasonableness and tolerance of opposition were of fundamental importance.¹²⁸ As mentioned earlier there were, notably in the bad days of 1940, members of the public, some on school committees and boards of governors, who wanted direct, robust patriotism, with raised flags, in schools.¹²⁹ This was linked with uneasiness about disloyalty and lukewarmness in teachers, with charges of being anti-British, which by inference meant pro-Russian, not pro-German. The Minister of Education, H. R. G. Mason, as this excitement was rising, said that teachers must speak of the war in terms that could be understood by children, and that children should be prepared for adult democracy by training towards critical habits of thought. They should learn to see through false arguments and mass propaganda, to respect honest differences of opinion. The schools should never be places of propaganda, but it was not propaganda to teach that the Empire was based on democratic values, or to teach faith in race and country. He doubted, however, if frequent flag saluting would generate such feelings; rather it might become a meaningless habit.¹³⁰

More than a year later, in mid-November 1941, regulations prescribed a fairly pedestrian flag-saluting ceremony for use on seven anniversaries: Waitangi Day, Anzac Day, Empire Day, King's Birth day, Dominion Day, Trafalgar Day and Armistice Day, plus any occasions decreed by the Minister or by the local school committee (mainly to pay tribute to the war death of an old boy). It was, explained the Education Gazette, difficult to teach love of country, which was a personal emotional development, but children could learn to be proud of New Zealand and the British Empire; and gratitude to those who had served the country in peace and in war might promote desire to serve likewise. The value of the ceremony was largely that the children would there unite in feeling themselves part of a great community, with all schools doing likewise.

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The assembled staff and pupils would sing ‘God Defend New Zealand’ or other suitable song, a teacher or pupil would recite from memory, ‘We give thanks for the privileges we enjoy as New Zealanders and members of the British Commonwealth of Nations; we honour the memories of all who have served our country (especially Joe Blank.…) We will honour our King, obey the laws of his Government, and serve our country and our fellow men.’ The flag should then be broken at the masthead, preferably by a pupil; if the school had a bugler he could pay the General Salute or, if a death was being marked, the Last Post; or there should be a 15- second drum roll. A teacher, a pupil, or the whole assembly should then recite ‘The flag stands for our country and our people, and for our love of truth, justice, freedom and democracy, in which we are united through the person of our King, with all other members of the British Commonwealth of Nations’, followed by a 15-second silence, and the first verse of the National Anthem. At the end the only speeches should be those appropriate to the occasion.¹³¹

Despite the abolition of flogging for adults,¹³² proposals for the abolition of corporal punishment in schools had little effective support. The Wellington Education Board held in December 1942 that ‘discipline’ was more necessary than ever.¹³³ The rector of Waitaki High School spoke of the ‘current deluge of sloppy sentimentality’ and asked whether he should turn out jellyfish and molluscs or hemen with backbone and spirit enough to face the stern realities of life,¹³⁴ A writer to the Press advocated continued or increased use of the cane: ‘One might even go so far as to say that it is the frequent use of the cane in youth that has made our men the great fighters that they are.’¹³⁵

Both teachers and pupils had from the early months been involved in various patriotic activities, largely through the Red Cross, which promoted both training in first-aid and knitting and sewing for soldiers and refugees. For instance, from 1940 to mid-1942 Auckland primary schools gave 30 550 garments to the Red Cross, as well as knitting hundreds more from wool supplied by local patriotic associations;¹³⁶ for the EPS, the boys of Christchurch's Shirley High School and Papanui Technical College made 300 medical splints;¹³⁷

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some direct requests were made by patriotic boards to girls' schools for items such as soldiers' hussifs and milk jug covers.¹³⁸ Camouflage net making gained help from school children.

School children, particularly Boys Scouts and Girl Guides, were obvious house-to-house gatherers for the many salvage collections, of scrap metal, bottles, paper, rags and rubber, both in special drives and as routine measures. For example, Wellington householders could easily contribute waste paper: they had only to write or to ring the local school and boys would call the following Friday, taking bundles to the school depot.¹³⁹

Many schools raised money for patriotic funds through sales and entertainments, odd-job earnings and savings. Kelburn school, Wellington, in November 1941, gave £10 raised during the year in small entertainments arranged by the children themselves.¹⁴⁰ Okaiawa school, Taranaki, in August 1940 gave £25 from a highly successful bring-and-buy and the sale of bottles and bones collected by the children.¹⁴¹ The not over-privileged children of Newtown school, Wellington, in 1942 accepted a suggestion that the money for their annual picnic should go to soldiers' parcels, each of which carried a note from the children; the next year, inspired by warm letters from soldiers, they aimed to send £5 worth of parcels a month.¹⁴² Sometimes, especially if parents and staff weighed in, these efforts were substantial, as when Devonport school, Auckland, having saved £150 in penny banks, topped it off with a gala that raised £250.¹⁴³ Sometimes the contributions were long sustained, as when Auckland Technical School pupils in December 1943 handed over £500, the third instalment of £1,800 raised since the start of the war.¹⁴⁴

As in so many areas, a ‘lead’ could start a snowball, almost an avalanche. In the urgency of June 1940, the Canterbury Education Board's chairman and some headmasters launched an appeal for £2,500 to buy an ambulance,¹⁴⁵ with such success that £3,679 was contributed from about 400 public and private schools, a pleasing feature, it was officially said, being that the money came from the efforts of the children themselves, not from their parents.¹⁴⁶ ‘This was “90 per cent mythical”’, wrote a parent. ‘The competitive spirit has been worked up among the children to a surprising degree, and

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the parents have been paying the bill.’¹⁴⁷ At a meeting of Canterbury school committees, one speaker said, ‘As for compulsion, there was a little, on the soft pedal. I had to give my children something because I did not want them to feel outsiders.’ It was also stated that the names of some children who had not contributed had been written on the blackboard. The Canterbury committees resolved that in future such appeals would require the consent of each school committee.¹⁴⁸ However, by September 1942 the Canterbury schools had raised £7,612 altogether for the ambulance and for soldiers' parcels¹⁴⁹ and by October 1943 had collected another £1,800 for the latter.¹⁵⁰

The growing of vegetables in school gardens was suggested in 1940 by the Director of Primary Production, and favoured by the Department of Agriculture and school agricultural instructors.¹⁵¹ Schools in the Bay of Plenty were notably active;¹⁵² among them Poroporo school, Whakatane, grew 10 hundredweight of onions, while Paengaroa sent a ton of onions and two and a half tons of carrots to Papakura camp.¹⁵³ After the potato famine of mid-1942,¹⁵⁴ when for a few weeks a soldier's allowance was reduced to three ounces a day, Northland schools grew 14 tons for the Army, collecting depots being set up in Kaitaia, Kaikohe and Whangarei.¹⁵⁵ Only durable vegetables could be sent direct to camps, and as the vegetable shortage developed the schools' efforts became more generalised. Thus in the spring of 1942, nine Ashburton county schools grew early vegetables at home and at school, half the proceeds going to the school and half to patriotic funds.¹⁵⁶ In 1943 the children of Tauhei school, Morrinsville, in their spare time grew half a mile of carrots and a quantity of pumpkins.¹⁵⁷ In 1942 schools of the Wellington Education Board, some in home gardens, some cultivating patches of farmland, produced 75½ miles of vegetables, mainly onions, carrots and potatoes, some for home use, the rest for sale at patriotic stalls.¹⁵⁸ This cultivation was increased in 1943.¹⁵⁹

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Many children of the war years would long remember trying to gather ergot, a little, black, banana-shaped fungus about half-an- inch in length that grows on the seed of tall fescue and marram grass, and yields a drug that checks bleeding. In the summer of 1940–1, Britain asked for tons of ergot, and picking it seemed a task well within the range of children. But without sufficient help from elders, many gathered ‘smuts’, another seed disease; the collection of their pickings was not well-organised and the result was a pitiful few pounds from the whole country.¹⁶⁰ Next year the Department of Agriculture pushed the ergot campaign more briskly, with copious descriptions, illustrations and displays in shop windows, and pamphlets issued to scouts, guides, other youth groups and to farming bodies. The Education Department especially urged teachers and children to combine patriotism with pocket-money, at 3d to 6d an ounce.¹⁶¹ It was reported that the government had earmarked £14,000 for ergot-buying, which would pay for about 14 tons.¹⁶²

Results were generally disappointing: since ergot needs warmth and moisture, dry and windswept areas were useless. Many children and others lost interest after a few futile afternoons that half-filled a matchbox. Some Girl Guides collected four ounces valued at 2s in 72 hours.¹⁶³ But in a few schools, zeal and fungoids came together: the children of Pirinoa, Wairarapa, collected more than 21 pounds, and the little school of Tinui 24 ounces;¹⁶⁴ at Feilding, where the crop was good and ergot-gathering was part of the special programme, 73 pounds were collected¹⁶⁵ and about Wanganui 171 pounds.¹⁶⁶

Ergot gathering was not solely a children's activity; for instance, 50 Red Cross and WWSA women from Rangiora, on a Saturday afternoon, found a large quantity at Saltwater Creek.¹⁶⁷ From all sources, but largely from the province of Auckland, about 1600 pounds were finally assembled.¹⁶⁸ Happily, no ergot was requested in 1943.

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In the first summer of the war, the Vocational Guidance officer at Auckland, aiming to improve town and country understanding and to recruit youths to farming, placed nearly 100 picked schoolboys, of 15 years or more, on farms during the holidays. They were paid at least £1 a week, plus keep, and many farmers found them more useful than expected.¹⁶⁹ Next summer the scheme was put forward more widely, through labour placement officers and youth centres in the four main cities. Some 754 boys volunteered, but only 318 were placed, for varying short periods at award wages, although farmers known to be requiring labour had been notified by placement officers that boys were available.¹⁷⁰ In October 1941 these officials again prepared their lists, this time including university students, and amid the post-Japanese entry call-up it was decreed that boys under 15 might work on dairy farms.¹⁷¹ Award wages were £1 a week and board for boys not yet 17, and 26s 6d for those of 17 to 18 years. Demand was keener; by 13 December, 79 boys were on Canterbury farms where only 33 had been taken the previous year,¹⁷² and in all 630 lads were placed.¹⁷³

The following summer, 1942–3, the Auckland Star remarked that while in the past relatively few secondary school pupils had worked on farms or in factories and offices, that year only a few would make holiday.¹⁷⁴ Probably this was true mainly for district high schools. A survey at Whangarei showed that 102 high school boys would be on farms, 16 market gardening, 19 in shops, 31 in assorted jobs, and of 11 who did not intend useful work five had some physical disability.¹⁷⁵ Of Wairarapa High School's 220 boys, 175 were going on to farms and 38 were taking jobs mainly in the meat works.¹⁷⁶ The Waikato took many boys, often on the farms of relatives;¹⁷⁷ many returned to farms where they had already worked.¹⁷⁸

In some areas there was a last minute rush, with farmers finally deciding to take on boys who meanwhile had turned to other jobs, and in the Auckland province demand was strong enough to draw

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158 boys from Wellington.¹⁷⁹ Award wages, plus keep, were now 22s a week for those of less than 17, 29s for those of 17 to 18, 36s for those of 18 to 19 years; it was arranged that boys, if needed, could remain in jobs till the end of February.¹⁸⁰

Many farmers, while crying out for men to be released from the Army, were not overkeen to accept boys;¹⁸¹ the Army harvesting scheme would supply stronger labour, strictly for busy periods, without the complication of giving board to boys. McLagan, Minister of Industrial Manpower, suggested that the poor response to the boys indicated that there was sufficient labour on farms, and that farmers who did not avail themselves of senior boys, students and teachers would jeopardise their chances of getting men released from the Army.¹⁸² There were counter-charges that the Minister and the National Service Department did not understand the nature and problems of farming, and that the schoolboy scheme was poorly publicised and organised.¹⁸³ The Press on its farming page observed that the current season's application scheme, conducted by Primary Production Councils, had not been as brisk in canvassing as had Youth Centre officials previously, was cumbersome, and that farmers were chary about inexperienced lads. However, the tabulation of local farmers' comments on the 1941–2 boys showed that the scheme could be thoroughly recommended: 42 per cent were classed as very useful, 51 per cent as sufficiently useful, seven per cent as insufficiently useful; in willingness, 13 per cent were fair, 33 per cent good and 54 per cent excellent.¹⁸⁴ Further, such a scheme promoted mutual understanding and interchange of workers between town and country,¹⁸⁵ necessary to encourage town lads back to the land.

Vegetable-growing greatly increased in the 1942–3 season, with sudden demands for picking and packing. Girl Guides, scouts, school parties and other batches of youngsters were organised to pick peas, beans, and tomatoes, to cut lettuces and pull onions. Some went out daily to the farms for a few days, some for longer, others camped on the job for a week or several weeks. There were disappointed murmurs from those who found that they worked for little money.¹⁸⁶ For instance, some scouts who camped for ten days at Pukekohe after paying £1 for their keep found that they had only about 5s

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each to show for seven six-hour days. Growers replied that the boys were paid normal rates but were slow: Maori girls of their age could make £1 a day picking beans at 2s 6d a case.¹⁸⁷

In all, McLagan claimed in February, 5140 boys spent all or most of their holidays on farms, and there would be many more of whom his Department had no record.¹⁸⁸ But presumably many in the tally had harvested vegetables, and there was no clear indication whether the work was six weeks among the cows and potatoes, or a few days making hay, thinning turnips or picking peas.

In the summer of 1943–4, with vegetables being canned, dried and quick-frozen for the Pacific, there were elaborate official plans for secondary school volunteers, boys 15 to 18, girls 16 to 18 years, in relays, to work an extra month if necessary between February and April. Other pupils (and school leavers) were invited to make their own arrangements for working on farms—there were no more efforts to coax reluctant farmers—but here too they would be exempted from school for up to four weeks if the district Manpower officer certified that they were doing work of national importance with parents or others.¹⁸⁹ Headmasters strongly opposed encroachments on school time, some saying that last year's pupils who made a late start had never caught up.¹⁹⁰

Boys were not very keen on vegetable work, which had proved monotonous and no bonanza,¹⁹¹ but some, as at Whangarei, helped in pea-picking rushes etc, earning 1d per pound of peas,¹⁹² and on 16 December 1943 about 70 from Auckland schools entrained for an army-style camp at Patumahoe, with teachers in charge and promises of films and sport facilities. Maximum wages were 1s 6d an hour, with 44 hours a week guaranteed.¹⁹³ Meanwhile, parties of schoolgirls were taken daily by bus to Mangere gardens.¹⁹⁴ These activities were shortened by dry weather: the girls' work ceased about 9 January, the boys' mainly before the end of the month.¹⁹⁵ However, during February the relay system brought about 100 high school boys and girls daily in buses to pick tomatoes and peas near Hamilton.¹⁹⁶

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In all, Vocational Guidance placed 1831 school children (including 47 school leavers) in holiday work between December 1943 and February 1944. Among these, 143 were on vegetables, 154 picked fruit, hops, etc, 296 harvested, 174 were on general farm work, 660 (mainly girls) in shops and offices, 75 in warehouses and woolstores.¹⁹⁷ Many others found their own work, but no complete figures were published. In the 1944–5 season, Vocational Guidance placed only 1674 in jobs, nearly half in shops and offices;¹⁹⁸ the special war pressures for school-holiday labour were over.

The Education Department played an early part in another special wartime problem. During 1942 when large numbers of lads under 21, together with older soldiers, were mobilised for home defence, and the early skelter had subsided into camp routines, there was general awareness that boredom was the soldiers' most constant enemy, boredom strengthened by separation from many channels of ideas and by the dominance of the lowest common factor in Army conversation. The Army was aware of immediate problems; educationists also foresaw intellectual deterioration and difficulties when soldiers returned to the community.

The problem had been recognised in Britain during 1940 when ‘military authorities were seriously worried about the combined effects of defeat, inactivity and bullshit on the morale of the troops’.¹⁹⁹ A committee in September 1940 reported that education in a broad sense was indispensable to morale, and that every unit should have its education officer. This led to a vast number of lectures and short courses on all sorts of topics, and to the creation of the Army Bureau of Current Affairs. To sustain purpose and morale through a long war, troops had to know why they were fighting, along with the background, development and possibilities of world events. Acquiring this knowledge became part of the British Army's training time, not only in the home forces but in all theatres of war, by lectures, pamphlets, exhibitions, wall newspapers, educational films and information rooms.²⁰⁰

By mid-1942, local university speakers and others were