The School Journal in Renwick

Every child educated in New Zealand will have more than a passing acquaintance with our national treasure: school journals. A creative incubator for the likes of Rita Angus, Margaret Mahy and James K. Baxter, their pages have filled young minds for more than a century.

School Journal cover, 1964. Courtesy Renwick Museum. Click image to enlarge

The Alexander Turnbull Library has a complete set of School Journals dating back to 1907 and various university libraries and the Auckland Public Libraries hold issues. But a little Marlborough library has one of the most comprehensive public collections dating from 1907 to the 1980s.

Renwick Museum and Watson Memorial Library
Click image to enlarge

In 1930, a teacher, Herbert Watson, built a small library next to his Renwick home.  The book collection, which included school journals dating back to 1907, was later rescued, with another teacher, Marjorie Pattie, cataloguing and adding to it. This significant collection is now housed in the small volunteer-run Renwick Museum and Watson Memorial Library, near Blenheim.

Climate control comes by way of interior block walls - chilly in the winter, but a welcome refuge in summer.  It's easy to get lost in a time warp in the windowless room, as the musty smell of old paper  escapes from boxes of slim, black and white  journals which contain stories of nationhood and ‘home' (England). Books such as The Home Educator (1896), The Complete Grazier and cloth-bound volumes of childhood favourites also line the shelves of the tiny library.    

You can dip into nostalgia at an exhibition of School Journals at the Renwick Library and Watson Museum. ¹ And at your fingertips, the National Library has an online exhibition celebrating 100 years of school journals at http://www.natlib.govt.nz/collections/online-exhibitions/school-journal

Written by Joy Stephens and published  in North & South, 2012

Edited February 2021

Story by: Joy Stephens