Getting On, Getting Out, and Going Places: Education, Opportunity, and Social Mobility in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Rural New Zealand

Abstract

Abstract:This article does not purport to provide an exhaustive overview of the history of rural high school education in New Zealand. Such information can be readily obtained from a number of existing historical studies in education. Rather, it seeks to identify and analyse the complex ways whereby those associated most closely with these schools, the students, teachers, and parents, steadfastly and successfully resisted the determined and repeated efforts of the Department of Education, its Directors, and successive Ministers of Education to introduce and popularise a highly ‘practical’, non-academic, agriculturally oriented curriculum in New Zealand's rural (district) high schools on the grounds of education and social efficiency. What becomes abundantly clear is that the educational demands and expectations of rural communities were markedly different from the official discourse. Rural communities expected, and sought access to, the same high status knowledge and highly prized public school examinations that offered ambitious urban youth the opportunity to gain enhanced economic, geographical, social, and vocational mobility. Consequently, the elevated status of traditional academic subjects meant that preparation for examinations came to dominate, and quickly overshadow, the curriculum offerings of the district high schools and this persisted for more than a century.