MANUAL TRAINING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 91, 19 April 1939, Page 17

MANUAL TRAINING

NEW BUILDING IN USE

AT MIRAMAR SOUTH

Pupils of the primary schools of eastern Wellington will henceforth receive their manual training instruction at Miramar South, where a new building to. replace the Rongotai College rooms, which previously housed the manual training classes, was used for the first time today.

Situated in the grounds of the Miramar South School, at the corner of Broadway- and Kauri Street, the new manual training centre is handier'"/) the tram than the old one was,-?r:d the majority of pupils from the i.1 .ay schools in the district will find it a more convenient place to reach. In size the two new classrooms are identical with those of the old centre, but the facilities now available are better, and they should .be of considerable assistance to both instructors and pupils in their important work.

The girls' workroom in the new building was a scene of excited activity today as sixth standard girls from the Miramar Central School busied i.hemselves with their apparently not very onerous t;asks in their new surroundings. Besides the numerous gas stov^; the girls now have the use of an electric stove, an advantage not enjoyed in the old room, and there is the very latest in coal ranges with a thermometer on the oven door to prove.its modern design.

Each class of girls attends once a week for an hour and three-quarters, and the instructor, Mrs. E. Jenner, has fifteen classes a week. Ingredients used are provided by the school, md the girls take their cooked productions home as evidence of their ability. In the third term of the year a change is made to dressmaking classes. WOODWORK FOR BOYS. Woodwork engages the eager attention of the boys all the year round, and in this department also the instructor, Mr. E. Nicholson, takes fifteen ; classes a week, each for an hour and three-quarters. Tools and wood are supplied, and the finished articles ranging from bookshelves to te^j wagons, are triumphantly taken horne1 by their makers. I

Only pupils from the fifth and sixth! standards attend the glasses, there being about 300 girls and 250 boys attending every week. The training is not intended to be vocational. It has a wider value in inculcating self-reliance, ambition, confidence, and executive ability, and though the children may i not know the value of their manual! training, they do know it to be the! most interesting class of the week, j AT RONGOTAI COLLEGE. ! The two rooms vacated by the centre at Rongotai College will give muchneeded relief, where accommodation is greatly over-taxed. One of the rooms will be used for an extension of the craftwork classes, and the other will be transformed into a combined drawing and art room. No drastic structural [ alterations are proposed, as the immediate future of the school is uncertain. Two portable classrooms are expected to be erected at the college by the end of May, to provide accommodation fot 70 pupils, and if a proposal to enlarge the, library is carried into j i effect the accommodation question 'should'be settled for a time at least.