"HAVE IDEALS"

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 144, 15 December 1933, Page 13

"HAVE IDEALS"

GIRLS LEAVING SCHOOL1

LADY M.P.'S ADVICE

"I want to congratulate Miss Batham, the principal, on the report she has presented on the work of the Wellington East Girls' College for the past year r It was a wonderful picture of school, life,' f said Mrs. McCombs, 'M.P., at the breaking-up ceremony of the college yesterday afternoon. . "I could not help thinking of the long Toad—the educational road," she proceeded —"that has been travelled since I was at school. Some parents will remembgr that in those days education was very different to what it is now. The change has been more or less evolutionary—a long, quiet. upward trend." Mrs. McCombs said that although the educational road had "been a slow up: ward grade it had not been travelled without effort. The teachers who had travelled that road had felt every step of the way. . It had been an upward climb, because the teachers had ideals, and .because all the timo they were teaching out for something better in the way of education. The' school life of today, with, its varied interests, with its amazingly interesting subjects, and its interestng, methods of Reaching and of study—it was a yery<k%Wonderful thing. When, the early ,*ettlers came to New Zealand they (.vanted to found in this young new country an educated democracy, and so in the various centres they established endowments for schools: they were very largely endowments for boys' schools. KNOWLEDGE AND IDEALS. "This is what I want to tell the girls who are here today," said Mrs; MeCombs, "that the opportunities they have for education have been won principally by the efforts of teachers and the broadminded men and women who realised that you could not have a true democracy when only one half of the people was educated." \The speaker then referred to the cramming system, in preparation for examinations, and said that her hearers must cultivate ideals, and when they left school that would become a most important thing, With ideals, their knowledge would have an added value; life was inspired by high ideals. The speaker reiterated that her messagewas to be loyal to their ideals, and to be loyal to their sex, because sometimes girls were not—not because they did not want to be. loyal, but because they did not think about it. Mrs. McCombs then referred to the tremendous .effort • she had to make— subsequently assisted by others—to get women doctors appointed to a hospital. Every step that had been won by women, towards freedom and emancipatioa had been won for them by the work of other women and by un-self-regard-ing men. Air. G. Mitchell, chairman of the Board of Governors, presided at the ceremony of the presentation of prizes. Mrs. W. E. Jackson, of tho Parents' Association, presented the prizes. Two carols, "See Amid the Winter's Snow," "I Saw Three Ships," and the "Coronation Song" were sung by the stud- , eatfc