Youth Leadership Course Planned

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30971, 29 January 1966, Page 12

Youth Leadership Course Planned

A youth leadership training school to be established in May will provide the first comprehensive course of professional training for youth workers ever offered in New Zealand, Open to men and women from all youth agencies, the course will include the basic training required by a youth worker and will lead to a diploma of youth leadership. The establishment of the school, which in the initial stages will be on a part-time basis, is the result of many years of experimentation with staff training programmes by the national council of the Young Men’s Christian Associations of New Zealand which will sponsor the training school. As the programme develops the council intends to establish a residential training centre so that opportunities for full time study can be offered to practising or prospective youth workers. The present course of study with its goal, “education of the whole man—body, mind and spirit—in the service of all men," —will extend over a four-year period with students spending two monthly residential sessions in Wellington each year. The first will be in May at the commencement of the programme. The second will be in February, 1967 when the first year’s study will end with examinations in the subjects studied.

Subjects in the curriculum will be studied in terms of their application to youth work and methods used by youth leaders. They will include administration, camping, Christian education, education methods of communication, New Zealand, philosophy, physical education, psychology, recreation, social agency social work, sociology and youth leadership. Skill courses designed to develop the students performance and coaching ability will also be included in the programme. Each year students will take one compulsory and one optional school course. Compulsory skills will be first-aid, minor games, water safety and audio-visual aids. A wide selection of

optional skills will be available.

Competent, specialist instructors, drawn from various sections of the community, will be responsible for individual subjects and skill courses.

Between the two residential sessions students will be employed by their own agency. They will be supervised in their practical work as well as being required to complete written assignments on the various subjects. Classes taking the diploma course will be started every two years. Future plans for the programme include an introductory correspondence course for prospective students and endorsed diploma courses which will allow advanced study In specialist areas.