“We’re trying to contact as many as we can,” he told RNZ Checkpoint. “We’re hoping we can get them to come in and read them, and we can record them and put them on Facebook.
“There are a couple we’ve had to scan to Australia or down south to let them read it first, and we might get some of our current students to read them out.”
As per instructions, former Walton principal Bob Marlow, now 78, was invited back to open the time capsule, which was hidden in a fireproof container in the school’s photocopy room.
“He was the former principal of our school from 1988-2012 and I took over in 2013,” Kurth said. “He’s a bit of a legend in our area of the Walton community.
“He’s a great guy and he was pretty stoked to be able to open this envelope. He could recollect all the kids’ names – he was reading them out and knew exactly where they were now.
“It was quite remarkable seeing the attachment he still had with these former students. It was a beautiful thing.”
While Kurth has mainly resisted the temptation to open the individual envelopes, he has had to send the contents of some further afield, which gave him an insight into what was written 27 years ago.
“They had a template with a few questions and the kids each wrote their answers to that,” he said. “I’ve had a peek into what they are – a bit of a prediction of what they might do in the future, what they might do or what they hoped to do.
“Some of the handwriting is a bit interesting and the spelling is a bit wayward, but you know, they’re 10-year-old kids.
“There was typical stuff at the start – favourite TV shows, actresses and food, and things like that – which led into what you’d like to do in the next 25 years, what hopes you might have, jobs you wanted to do and places you’d like to visit. It gave them the opportunity to be pretty broad with their answers, if they wanted to.”
Of the 24 envelopes uncovered, five authors have been tracked down.
“We know some of them are still in the local community, and we hope word of mouth will reach them and they’ll pop in next week,” Kurth said.
The discovery has captured the imagination of social media users across the globe.
Faced with a similar exercise today, Kurth hoped his students would reflect the non-curriculum lessons taught at Walton School.
“Probably just show kindness and be good,” he said. “That’s the key message we’re trying to tell our kids.
“We want the world to be a better place and that’s why this story has resonated across the world.”