Every photograph is a window into the past- and sometimes what you see surprises you. Children singing a waiata about being kind to animals seems like a modern day school lesson, but the writing on this slide is from 1924! In the 1920s only a few private schools taught the grammer of Te Reo. Tragically, all the other schools saw speaking Te Reo as a caning offence. Was this slide of one of the private schools- or a smaller group or club? We just don't know.

Or maybe these children were located at Waiata Shores, near Auckland (although even then, few schools used Te Reo names for locations back in the 1920s).

Art historian Walter Benjamin coined a term called 'optical unconsciousness' and part of that is seeing a photograph in hindsight. The people in it do not know the future, but we do. Whatever this photograph depicted it seems like it belongs in our present than in it's past.

But the past is full of surprises!

Penciled on back: “See also. old classroom renovation Levin school, May 1973. Blackboard found in wall.”

Part of a blackboard, found in a wall of Levin School, Oxford Street, May 1973. This board had been written by the builder F C Lemmon during renovations in 1932 and again by the same builder in 1936.

1 B&W photo print

Any use of this image must be accompanied by the credit “Horowhenua Historical Society Inc.”