Obituary: Louise Gardner

Louise Gardner

* Louise Gardner, MBE. Headmistress, Auckland Girls' Grammar School, 1967-78. Died aged 90.

Few teachers could have been as closely involved with one school longer than Gwladys Louise Gardner. Auckland Girls' Grammar School occupied much of 78 years of her life through childhood, career and retirement.

Once nominated by a senior inspector of secondary schools as one of the top three mathematics teachers in the country, she also headed the inner-city grammar school in years when it was becoming increasingly multicultural and while it was undergoing a full-scale building redevelopment programme.

She fiercely resisted Education Department proposals which would have damaged the graceful old buildings and grounds but pushed hard for modern education facilities.

Louise Gardner firmly believed in the value of single-sex schools, arguing that boys and girls develop at different rates and have different interests.

"Academically there are advantages," she said. "Adolescence is a time of instability and concentration is easier without the distractions of the opposite sex."

She thought there were ample opportunities to meet boys outside school hours. But she also believed parents should have a choice of the kind of school their child would attend.

When she became headmistress Miss Gardner, as she was always called, remarked that the school was really her second home. Her mother, Gwladys [a Welsh name] Parry, attended the school before her. And in many ways it was as though Louise Gardner left New Lynn Primary School and went to the grammar school in 1928 - and stayed there.

From 1930 she was a train prefect, supervising girls on the train from New Lynn to Mt Eden then walking as a "crocodile" (these days a "walking bus") to school in Howe St, Freemans Bay.

She was a full prefect in 1932 and head prefect in 1933. Academically she was second to the dux in her final year, studying English, Latin, French, mathematics, botany and home science. She won an A Bursary in each of her last two years.

For the next six years, her only really long break from the grammar school, she studied at Auckland University, gaining an MA (Hons) in mathematics - an unusual achievement for a woman in those times - and a Diploma in Education.

After teaching briefly at Nga Tawa school in Marton she joined the staff at Auckland Girls' Grammar School in 1940 and became head of its mathematics department in 1954. She was also involved with many educational bodies.

The district around Auckland Girls' has seen considerable change over the years. So has the school.

Louise Gardner said the school had always had an interest in the education of Maori girls but from 1940 it adapted to an ever-increasing number of non-Europeans, including Pacific Islanders, Chinese and Indians.

In 1976 the school set up a special "English as a second language unit" but for many years before that it had staff gifted in helping Polynesian pupils.

Louise Gardner believed in a curriculum able to meet the needs of the individual. She was also keen on pupils understanding each other's cultures.

Her predecessor as headmistress, Miss Rua Gardner (no relation), rated her a thorough, forceful and inspiring teacher, with a gift for lucid explanation. Her ability to organise, her understanding of children, sense of humour and her love for the school were also noted.

One problem which has upset Auckland Girls' parents for many years was one which neither headmistress managed to solve - the Karangahape Rd striptease clubs' advertising near the school. Siding with the school's parent-teacher association in 1967, the year she became headmistress, Louise Gardner observed "I don't think I'm a fussy old prude." But she could not see why the city council could not do more.

When she retired, the old girls' association commissioned rose breeder Sam McGredy to produce the Louise Gardner rose, marking her interest in gardening and floral arts.

But her real legacy lies in the many former pupils who achieved later distinction, including a large number of senior and post-graduate scholars.