CHILDREN AT MUSEUM

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28766, 11 December 1958, Page 9

CHILDREN AT MUSEUM

Mr H. W. Beaumont’s Experience

There was only one way to know children and that was to be with them, the retiring education officer of the Canterbury Museum (Mr H. W. Beaumont) told the annual meeting of the Association of Friends of the Museum.

Mr Beaumont, who was presented with a Japanese print by the association at the meeting, was looking back over his years at the museum. •‘You cannot learn about children from a book. Real children are different. A teacher who can live with children is bound to influence them in one way or another," he said.

Mr Beaumont said that during his - years at the museum it had been a joy and privilege to know children. It had also been his privilege to know most of the headmasters of Christchurch. “I am one person in the education service in Canterbury who has been able to be with groups at all levels of the education system in primary schools.” He said he had dealt with children, trained teachers, teachers of many years standing and head teachers. The maxim that children had “minds of wax to receive and unable to retain" had coloured his career “That is at the bottom of my philosophy,” Mr Beaumont said.

The association elected the following committee.—Patron, Mr James Deans; president, Mr G. C. C. Sandston; secretary, Mrs J. C. Wilson; treasurer, Dr. G. B. Battersby; auditor, Mr A. H. H Martin; committee, Mrs H. S. Barker, Misses P. Boyle, R. Reynolds, and J. Fulton, and Messrs E. J. Beardsley, H. W. Beaumont, S. R. Dacre, C. Dunn. H. G. Helmore, W. S. Mac Gibbon and R. Stead, and Dr. R. Duff.