Page 129 - Constructing Craft

Changing ideals and opportunities in education clearly affected
the developing idea of studio crafts practice as a professional,
personally rewarding way of life. Post-war education
emphasised the development of the individual as a “whole self”
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through creative experience.

Certainly many New Zealand children educated in the late-1930s and 1940s had a

less narrowly prescribed curriculum than their parents. The new education
environment placed more emphasis on creativity and, as a consequence, there

existed a more flexible attitude to the relationship between leisure activities and

career decisions – the idea that one could make a living from the creative arts was
not totally rejected ‒ but would still have been considered unlikely. Nevertheless,

changing economic conditions meant that many of the children educated through
this period and into the 1950s had a better chance of imagining careers that would

have been unimaginable to their parents.

During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s three key factors influenced the way children

would be educated and four individuals, linked by a hierarchical chain, drove the
sequence of events that led to the changes in art and craft education. The factors

were: first, the election of the first Labour Government in 1935; second, the
increasing influence of modern education theory; and third, the advocacy of a small

group of educationalists that art and craft become an integral, and ultimately

compulsory, part of a general education. The individuals who pushed the changes
were Peter Fraser, Dr Clarence Beeby, Doreen Blumhardt and Gordon Tovey.

Peter Fraser

Under the administration of the first Labour Government more emphasis was placed
on creativity in education and education became more democratic and child-

centred. Peter Fraser, the Minister of Education – and from 1940, Prime Minister –

was determined that education was more than a means to a livelihood: “Education
is not enough if it teaches us merely to make a living. Education must teach us how

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to live.” His policies were based on his belief that the state should provide free
education for all from primary school through to secondary school and university.
He linked education to a holistic approach to life. Fraser’s ideas were driven by the

Constructing Craft