LESSONS FOR SENIOR SCHOOL PUPILS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22004, 30 January 1937, Page 3

LESSONS FOR SENIOR SCHOOL PUPILS

USE OP RADIO NOT CONSIDERED PRACTICABLE

Any action on the suggestion made by the headmaster of the Geraldine District High School (Mr L. J. McGuigan) that lessons to senior pupils should be given by radio until the schools reopened, would be a matter for the Minister for Education, the Hon. P. Fraser, the secretary of the Canterbury Education Board, Mr L. E. Rowley, said yesterday, when the matter was referred to him. Christchurch teachers looked on the proposal with approval, but the opinion was expressed that its practicability would depend largely on the number of homes possessing radio.

Even if it was found that the homes of most of the senior pupils had a wireless set, it was said, the scheme still might not work as its success would rest on the amount of co-opera-tion that parents and pupils were prepared to give. All work done would necessarily be purely voluntary, and there would be no satisfactory way of ensuring that the scheme had achieved any good until the pupils’ progress had been checked on their return to school.

In Geraldine it was comparatively easy to be certain that the lessons would reach a worth-while number of pupils, but in Christchurch that would be a very different matter, it was stated. There were only 40,000 licensed radio sets in Canterbury province, while in Christchurch alone there were 25,000 homes, so that in the city toe plan did not seem worth-while.