VACATION SCHOOL

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 137, 6 March 1941, Page 5

VACATION SCHOOL

Correspondence Pupils At

Oamaru

REVIEW BY HEADMASTER Commenting on the recent vacation school at Oamaru for pupils of the Government Correspondence School, the headmaster, Dr. A. G. Butchers, said yesterday that not once did the teaching staff experience a single problem of discipline or conduct. This was due, he thought, to the fine home training the pupils received, to the sense of personal responsibility which home study by correspondence developed, and to the splendid leadership of the monitors, prefects and staff. “The primary and secondary classes concentrated chiefly on oral work in .English subjects, speech training, oral expression, dramatization, debating and so forth, and in the secondary department, in French pronunciation and practical science, specially agriculture,” he said. “Practical work in art and crafts and in woodwork, needlework and cookery found a prominent place in the afternoon programmes, and much excellent work was done. Many boys, for example, took home completed articles made in the woodwork room of which they hud reason to be proud.” Along with daily classroom work, so new to the pupils and so absolutely valuable to them. the*re went the dailyroutine of boarding school life, with its regular hours of rising,, ba thing and making beds, going to meals and, at the end of each full day, going back to bed. Dr. Butchers continued. He could not speak' too highly of the sjilendid and devoted work of the staff in carrying out all the multifarious residential duties which the vacation school involved —duties to which as Correspondence School teachers many of them were as strange as the pupils were to classroom and boarding school life. “The same applies to the prelects and monitors appointed from the senior pupils present. These boys and girls rose magnificently to the occasion and showed that Correspondence School pupils, when given the opportunity, can accept responsibility for internal school discipline and team work just as creditably as seasohed prefects of two or three years' standing iu the ordinary schools.

-Into' the daily warp ami woof ot classroom and boarding school routine was woven a varied programme of Physical, cultural and social education, he added. “Physical exercises of modern type were taken daily, in the open air, followed by the dally milk ration which is supplied to the regular schools. There was daily instruction in swimming in the baths, and special classes were conducted in life-saving. Before the school closed a very large number of the pupils had qualified for swimmers’ certificates covering distances ranging from 12 yards to one mile. Every afternoon there were organized games for the little ones, and regular instruction and practice in cricket and tennis for the older pupi.ls.’

"That some people in Germany had other ideals than just greed and power is seen from the fact that three years ago plans were laid down in that country for tm International Exhibition of Printing and a Celebration Congress in 1940 in the city of .Mainz.” said Mr. ” • A. Bascand, speaking on the history of printing to the Christchurch Businessmen’s Club at luncheon recently. "I had set my heart on going to it; but Adolf had other ideas. Adolf has had a lot to do with printing. A namesake of his, in the year 1462, sacked the city of Mainz and caused the dispersion of the early printers there. This ejection of printing from the city of its birth began the international use of this medium of reproduction of books and out of which good was born.”