Home schooling and the 1940s polio epidemics

Empty classrooms, parents struggling to home-school and teachers trying to work out ways to deliver feedback to students remotely… It sounds familiar but this was the reality in New Zealand 72 years ago, when schools stayed shut after the summer holidays and didn't reopen until after Easter.

In today's visit to the sound archives of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, Sarah Johnston plays some memories of that time, of a long, hot summer when a polio epidemic was keeping New Zealand children at home and indoors.

Listen to the full Spectrum documentary on the polio epidemics

1948 cartoon depicting a mother doing housework while supervising children's schooling from home. [Auckland Star newspaper, courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library]

Titahi Bay boy receiving the polio vaccine, 1958 [Evening Post newspaper, courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library]

Northern Advocate newspaper headlines 27 Jan 1948 [courtesy Papers Past]

Nurse with a child in an iron lung [via Wikimedia Commons]