French Students To Visit New Caledonia

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29972, 6 November 1962, Page 19

French Students To Visit New Caledonia

When a student party, sponsored by the modern languages department of the University of Canterbury, visits New Caledonia in the summer vacation, members will find everything "laid on" for them. This reflects the very close association which has been built up between the university and the Ministry of Education in Noumea. When the first such party paid a visit in 1960 there was general goodwill but some caution because the scheme was new. The French community provided a few lectures and a scenic bus trip up the east coast. The Canterbury students made such a fine impression that they were begged to continue the visits. Last Christmas a second party further enhanced the university's reputation by making most of the arrangements themselves. In the meantime formal discussions had been started at the official level.

This year the Ministry of Education itself has extended the invitation, prepared a comprehensive programme of lectures and demonstrations on French language literature, music, customs, and life; made accommodation available in the hostels of the Lycee La Perouse: and promised private hospitality. The Canterbury ’ party under Miss D. Drysdale, of Christ’s College, has been limited to 12 so that 17 studdents of French from the Victoria University of Wellington can join them under Miss Frances Huntington, their senior lecturer in French.

The combined party will leave on December 14 under a self-imposed pledge to speak no other language but French on the trip, with a stiff scale of fines for offenders.

These exchanges, pioneered and developed by Professor R. T. Sussex, have led to ■ tentative arrangement for Canterbury students of French later to have extended studies in New Caledonia and. next year, a Noumean student (Miss Michelle Corre> will come to Christchurch to take an arts degree. People and places in New Caledonia are now so well known to French lecturers and students in Canterbury that the annual visits are no more complicated than visiting friends. “As a result the students get so much more out of these visits,” said Professor Sussex.

The value of such exchanges has now been recognised by the French Government in Paris. Just after the Canterbury party returns a course will be held in Naumea for university and secondary school teachers and two professors from the Sorbonne will lead it. Lectures will include French literature, modern thought, French arts, the theatre and cinema, social life, teaching method. Pacific ethnology, and French technology. Professor Sussex said he thought this course would be extremely valuable and he would have liked his students to attend, especially because many of them would be taking up teaching. But the late announcement of the course might restrict numbers from New’ Zealand In another year he hoped such a course and a Canterbury visit might coincide.