The A to Z Challenge: S is for School

Primary school education was made free and compulsory in New Zealand in 1877.

In practice this covered far fewer children than "compulsory" suggests. Parents were exempt from having to send their children to school if they lived more than two miles from the nearest one, which was often the case in rural areas, especially in the early years of compulsory education. Those who lived close enough to a school might be separated from it by a river that occasionally became impassable; or they might simply be kept at home if their labour was considered essential. And the school itself might only be open part of the time: even by the 1920s, when my father-in-law went to a little one-roomed school, the teacher only came out from town three days a week. On three other days of the week (yes, that busy lady taught from Monday to Saturday) she drove her gig to another one-roomed school on the other side of town.

Unidentified school group. Ref: 1/4-005265-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. natlib.govt.nz/records/23012344

The sole-charge teachers with their rooms of pupils ranging in age from five to 13 or even older must have needed all the skills they could muster to keep order and to impart some sort of education to such a mixed range of age and ability. But their pupils were probably better off than those crammed into the busiest of the city schools, like this group:

Classroom of school children. Making New Zealand :Negatives and prints from the Making New Zealand Centennial collection. Ref: MNZ-2816-1/4-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. natlib.govt.nz/records/22735320

New Website

I have a website with some background information to my novels. Snippets of New Zealand history, as well as a description of the geographical setting.

The site is here.

Writing about real people

Although I use historical settings, I've studiously avoided using real, historical characters in my works. Over the years I've read and enjoyed many books that do portray real people, but I have an aversion to doing it myself that almost borders on fear. I'd hate to "get it wrong".

Recently I was blog-browsing, following links from one to the next, as you do, until I was so many link-layers in that I can't now remember whose blog it was or how I got there. I do remember that the blog quoted an author whose opinion on the subject helped me crystalise my own: what I feel most unwilling to do is use a real person as a point-of-view character. I simply don't feel comfortable thinking someone else's thoughts for them, when the person is not one of those characters living within that chaotic place I call my mind.

It's good that I've got that straight at last, because it's become increasingly clear to me that in my current work-in-progress I need to include a real, historical figure: the real, historical headmaster of an Auckland school. Oh, I could manipulate matters to avoid this. I could use a different name, but the headmaster at the time was a fairly well-known figure, and the school in question has a building named after him. I could scurry further from the issue and use an imaginary school, but anyone who's at all familiar with Auckland in the early 20th century would know what school I'm referring to. So I've taken the plunge, and am using the real Mr Tibbs (a name I'd hardly dare invent) for a short scene on enrolment day.

I'm fortunate enough to have read the memoirs, retrieved for me from the distant basement stacks of the library, of a man born just a few months after my point-of-view character for these scenes, and who went to this very school. He recorded his memories of his own enrolment day, so I can put words in Mr Tibbs' mouth that he is on record as having said. I've daringly added a few words of my own invention, but I don't think they will have the gentleman turning in his grave. And I've stayed steadfastly out of his head.