AFTER HOLIDAYS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 98, 22 October 1938, Page 8

AFTER HOLIDAYS

Parents, teachers, and children alike will welcome the announcement by the Minister of Education (Mr. Fraser) that the ordinary school curriculum is again to be suspended in February so that teachers and pupils may enjoy greater freedom during the hot weather. The experiment, made for the first time this year, has apparently been fully justified by results. The suspension of the curriculum does not mean any limitation of the hours of attendance at schools, but merely that teachers can suit their syllabuses to weather conditions. If the weather is fine and warm, lessons can be given in the open air and may even be extended to cover operations well outside the everyday work of classes,' such as rambles in the open, away from the noise and hustle of the city, visits to places of interest, and, what is probably even more popular with the children, the devotion of more time to swimming lessons. February is a trying month for most people, and it is particularly trying for children, who cannot be expected to accept with enthusiasm a sudden curtailment of the liberty of their Christmas holidays just at a time when Nature has so much to offer. If the blow can be softened without loss of efficiency, so much the better will it be for everybody. On the part of the children it may be expected that there will be less "creeping like snail unwillingly to school" and more enthusiasm for lessons when the school year begins in real earnest.