THE BUSH CHILD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2191, 15 May 1908, Page 1

THE BUSH CHILD.

A TRAVELLING SCHOOL.

A NEW SOUTH WALES IDEA

The latest attempt at a solution of the educational problem of the bachblocks child comes from the Minister of Education in New South Wales, who lias'decided to institute an itinerant school in tho Narrabri district. The teacher is to travel from placo to place in a covered vehicle, which will carry his school requisites and provide him with a shelter and a bed at night if necessary. Curiously enough this travelling school bears tho name of Eton-Harrow! There will bo four teaching stations, at each of which tho children will be taught for a week in rotation. The second station is six miles away from the first, and the third ten miles from the second, tho fourth is twenty miles from the third. Mr. Hogue believes that tliis kind is the first school of its kind in the world, and if it is a success, lie will extend the system to other parts of tho country. That such schools aro wanted is quite certain, for there aro districts in which even half-time schools aro out of tho question, and in which, to quote the “Sydney Morning Herald,” “number’s of children are growing to maturity in a condition of absolute illiteracy, and thus quite unequipped to take their places in tho community oa terms of equality with tho average of their fellows.” The teacher of the Eton-Harrow school will be properly qualified, and not, like many backblocks teachers, a novice. He will be more than a teacher, he will he a missionary of civilisation to isolated families in the back country. In view of this isolation, and of the fact that the travelling school cannot give continuous instruction in any one place, the “Herald” hopes that only men of superior type and decided personality will he chdsen, and contends that tho country generally should get, not the worst teachers at it does now, but the best. The policy of the Department should be turned round, and the absolute beet of the teaching service detailed for work in the country. “Country children have none of the benefits of contact and association which town children have, and -that drawback of situation should, as far as possible bo compensated 'for by superior attention at the hands of the State.”