Teachers’ Views On Education Today

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31542, 2 December 1967, Page 2

Teachers’ Views On Education Today

Unless pupils left school able to make stable personal relationships they were only half-educated and ill-equipped to take their place in the world, said Miss Constance Smith in Christchurch yesterday.

Secure relationships with parents, contemporaries, and friends, gave young people the support they needed when the pressures of modern life made them feel at the end of their tether, she said. Miss Smith, who graduated M.A. from Cambridge, taught classics at Christ’s Hospital, Hertford, and at St Paul’s Girls’ School, London, before her appointment as headmistress at Penrhos College, North Wales.

She retired last year after 28 yearsas head of the boarding school for 375 girls. COMMUNICATION It was die job of teachers, as well as parents, to help children communicate, and learn the difference between right and wrong, as young as possible. The,foundation Of consideration for ather»r-the basis of stable personal relationships —was to be found in the courtesy words, please, thank you, and sorry, she said. With Miss Jillian Hobbins, a London primary school teacher. Miss Smith is on a

world tour introducing the film, “Give A Dog A Bone”, in schools and to public audiences. Both teachers feel that children should be given aims to serve—“in the widest sense of the word”—and to feel a strong sense of commitment to others. CHALLENGE TO YOUTH “Children today will have to meet the tremendous challenge of feeding the world’s hungry and housing the homeless,” Miss Robbins said. “In the present scientific age. It is tremendously important that the growth of man’s character keeps pace with the growth of science and technology. “After all, it is the character of man that decides how the scientific knowledge will be used.”

The colour film they are promoting for Moral Re-arma-ment is from the musical pantomime by Peter Howard. It deals with the confrontation between care for others and indifference and is presented as a lively musical to catch the imagination of the young. Miss Robbins, who trained at the Froebel Educational Institute, Roehampton, before teaching in London schools, was largely responsible for having the pantomime filmed for world-wide distribution. To carry out the project, she and a teacher friend raised $70,000. MADE BY REQUEST “We had the musical filmed at the request of many people who saw the original show, many of whom were Asians,” Miss Robbins said.

The British Department of Education and Science has put the film on its official list as a recommended educational visual aid, she said. Miss Smith and Miss Robbins met the Mayor of Christchurch (Sir George Manning) yesterday morning. Miss Smith and Sir George found they had mutual friends in North Wales. The visitors showed their film to pupils of Villa Maria College yesterday afternoon and to a public audience in the evening.