Clark, Mr Jethro
The following is an extract from 'Tarago Public School Centenary 1878-1978', Tarago Centenary Committee:
"While Clark had difficulty passing the examinations for his Second Class Certificate - he failed four times from 1884 to 1895, before his eventual success in 1896-7 - he was at his best in improving the school grounds and instructing the pupils in agriculture. In the late nineteenth century the Department paid considerable attention to school sites and the use to which they were put, agriculture being introduced into the curriculum in the 1880's, and Arbor Day inaugurated in 1890.
Clark was extremely busy and effective at Tarago in fencing and establishing school gardens and agriculture plots, in obtaining trees and shrubs from the Botanical Gardens in Sydney, in keeping bees, and a range of other rural activities. In March 1892 Albert Gale, the Department's Supervisor of agriculture visited the school and found that:
"A good deal of useful and ornamental work has been done in the playground of this school. A large portion of the area....has been ploughed since the present teacher has been there, with the intention of sowing it with a mixture of grass seeds to form a lawn, but what should have been grass turned out to be English reed clover.....In front of the school is a well attended flower garden enclosed with a wire netting fence and filled with showy blooms. About 50 shade trees of various kinds have been planted (some have been in the ground for two years) and all of them are very healthy. The teacher's gardens are well kept, the whole being a picture of neatness."
The following year Clark applied for a bonus obtainable by teachers doing outstanding work in these fields, and duly received ₤2.
Like many other teachers of that period in small and poorly-educated communities, Clark was useful to Tarago citizens in a number of respects. In 18992 he gained the Department's permission to make out the accounts of the local butcher and baker for a small fee, in order to help 'and industrious and hardworking young man in gaining an honest likelihood'. In 1896 however, the newly established Public Service Board refused to allow him to continue this practice. The Board did relent however on the matter of allowing him to be Secretary of the Loyal Tarago Lodge of Oddfellows and receive ₤2 a year. Clark was popular at Tarago, and the district regretted his transfer to the higher classification school at Bundanoon at the start of 1898".
Schools
- Tarago Public School
03/1884 - 12/1897