TECHNICAL COLLEGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20727, 21 November 1930, Page 13

TECHNICAL COLLEGE.

ACCOMMODATION TAXED. MORE FACILITIES NEEDED. A report of an inspection of the Serldon Memorial Technical College was received from the Education Department at a meeting of the board of managers yesterday. The report, while complimenting the college on its high standard of efficiency, referred to several disadvantages under which the work was carried out. Accommodation daring the day and on four evenings a week was taxed to the utmost limit, classrooms in the old Grammar School building having to be used. The nuisance from noise from traffc which badly affected all rooms on the Wellesley Street frontage had not been lessened. Although teachers and pupils had in some cases adapted themselves in a remarkable degree to working under conditions of almost continuous extraneous noise the teaching efficiency in those classrooms must bo lowered and a greater strain placed on the teachers. The report also stated that many of the classrooms wore badly designed for the sizes of the classes they accommodated. This often resulted in the front row of children being only a few feet away from the wall facing them, and consequently correct vision of the blackboard was not always possible. The trouble was caused by over-accommodation, but in one or two cases the desks could bo better arranged The effectiveness of the agricultural course tended to be reduced by the absence of a laboratory, ana also of an experimental area of land. There was, therefore, a distinct and unavoidable tendency for the course to be "bookish" and theoretical, and to deal with words rather than with things.