LEAVING SCHOOL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 299, 17 December 1937, Page 9

LEAVING SCHOOL.

LADY GALWAY'S MESSAGE. GIRLS' GRAMMAR PRIZE-GIVING. A message for the day when they will lie leaving school was given to pupils of tlie Auckland Girls' Grammar School at the annual prize-giving ceremony this morning iiv Lady (ialway. Her Excellency distributed the prizes and sports trophies. T.adv (ialwav lielieved the passing of examinations in itself war; very laudable and very necessary. However, when one left school one hoped to be able to feel as well that the greatest possible advantage had been taken of school years, and that adequate mental and moral discipline, apart from discipline of the ordinary kind, had been accjuired. "All those things seem to me so very important," continued her Excellency. "We want also to feel that we have learned to distinguish the ugly and the beautiful .and that we have learned to preserve the beautiful wherever we can." Lady Gahvay. wjio was presented with a bouquet bv the head prefect, Patricia Walton, congratulated the gills on their successes and wished everyone a happy holiday. The proposed appointment to the school next year of a "careers assistant" was announced by Sir Algernon Thomas, chairman of the Auckland Grammar School Board. Professor Thomas said the proposal was that the assistant would help the headmistwss, Miss E. M. Johnston, to give advice and guidance to pupils in connection with their after-school career*. .Mention was made by Sir Algernon of this innovation as he contrasted the grammar schools' curricula of to-dav and •>•"> years or more ago, when lie himself had been a pupil. Nowadays, he said, not every pupil enrolled with the ultimate object of entering one of the learned professions. With the introduction of the free place system there had been a greater influx into the secondary schools, and the pupils went out into all walks of life.

Referring fo tlie recent Xew Education Fellowship conference in Xew Zealand, Sir Algernon said that the principles advocated by the realists of the visiting educationists had already been embodied to a large extent in tlie grammar schools. I he highest ideal was the training of a good citizen, ami the first aim was to provide a sound all-round education—the surest basis on which to found success in after life.

An address was also given bv Professor R. M. Algie, introduced as "an old friend «f the school."