Value Of Teachers* Refresher Courses

Northern Advocate, 21 July 1949, Page 5

Value Of Teachers* Refresher Courses

WELLINGTON, Thu. (P.A.).— The system of refresher courses for teachers operative since 1944 should bo continued, stated the report of the Teachers’ Refresher Course committee presented today to the Consultative Committee oc) Teacher Training. The number of courses had grown from two in 1945 to 13 in 1949, stated the report, which added that it appeared that refresher courses had developed in the teaching profession a sense of regard by teachers for their own professional standards.

Recommendation was made in the report for extension to part-time technical instructors.

Post-primary school Inspectors had told him there was a positive result in teachers’ work after refresher courses, said Mr J. V. Burton, who presented the report, in reply to the chairman of the consultative committee (Mr A. E. Campbell), 'We produce a remarkably high standard of hand-writing in the primary school —without regard to ihe speed subsequently required,” said Mr Anton Vogt, before the committee. Mr Vogt said that when a child went to secondary school it found that hand-writing was just a tool for getting information on paper. Mr Vogt cited this as an instance of “too many ceilings a child hits.” In a scheme for a training college and normal school as one unit, presented to the consultative committee, Mr Vogt proposed a secondary department as a means of avoiding such a “ceiling.”