Pubs lose to hobby classes

Press, 8 December 1976, Page 7

Pubs lose to hobby classes

People are leaving their pubs and television sets for adult evening classes, and their most popular choices are woodwork, engineering, and pottery, according to Mr T. French, the supervisor of evening classes at Hagley High School, which offers the greatest range of options in Christchurch. Adult evening classes in schools had been going for decades, but recently there had been an upsurge of interest, Mr French said. The number of classes offered by Hagley High School had grown from 10 in 1972 to 101, and the numbers attending had increased from 100 to 2700, he said. Evening classes seemed to have become enough of a phenomenon to draw custom from the local pub and the television set. “Whatever they got out of the brown. bottle they got by being passive recipients,” Mr French said. “They seem to want to do more about making their own entertainment.” Hagley High School has room for many more classes, and knows it could fill them, but it is limited by a Department of Education ceiling of 500 for the South Island regional district. Any additional classes it proposed would not be approved, so its only course is to eliminate the less popular. Four secondary schools offering evening classes have found that their most popular hobby classes are pottery, woodwork, and

engineering, in that order. Dressmaking is a close fourth. Engineering subdivides into enamelware and leathercraft, and some pupils are so competent by the end of the course that their supervisors buy samples of their work. Woodwork classes are no longer a man’s domain — several schools now run classes for women only, or have a fair spread of women through co-ed classes. The converse is not true; men are taking only timorously to dressmaking or cooking, which rate high in popularity. Hagley High School runs eight woodwork classes a week, five cooking classes, four dressmaking classes. Schools with a far more limited range of options run up to two classes each evening of pottery, dressmaking, and woodwork. A lot of those attending hobby classes are young married women looking for an interest outside the home, according to Mr French. Others are men or women whose children are off their hands. Many of the hobby classes are geared to women: cake decoration, grace and poise, embroidery, typing, macrame, floral art, hairdressing, and spinning. Men are able to attend classes with a broader appeal — photography, bridge, wines, and winemaking, understanding antiques, investment and the stock

exchange, orchestra — to name a few. Vocational classes — those taken to gain qualifications — attract two types of person: those wanting to catch up years spent drifting at school, and those embarking on a programme of selfimprovement. The options are about as many as the average school offers: English and mathematics are always the best attended. Enrolments are not

heavy yet, although some schools report that pottery classes are nearly full. Vocational classes will not begin to fill until the beginning of next year, when candidates have received results of prerequisite examinations. The community can do a lot to create the courses it wants at the school in its locality. Hobby classes that fail through lack of interest can be replaced by others, if a minimum of 15 pupils can be guaranteed to attend.