FOLK SCHOOL METHODS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23036, 13 May 1938, Page 12

FOLK SCHOOL METHODS

APPLICATION IN FEILDING VARIETY OF COURSES PLANNED ■£BY TEIiBGRAPB —OWN CORRESPONDENT] WELLINGTON, Thursday v The principle of the Scandinavian folk high schools and the application of part of it to a. new course of studies to be started at the Feilding Agricultural High School were explained by Mr. L. J. Wild, the principal, in an address to the conference of the New Zealand Technical School Teachers' Association. Mr. Wild said the scheme would not be possible but for a very remarkable man Mr. H. C. D. Somerset, formerly of tiie Oxford High School in Canterbury. Mr. Somerset would go to Feilding at the end of this week, and would start .work there next week as "a member of the staff of the Agricultural High School. ' • Their problem was to cater for people who had had enough of school, and did not want to be talked at any moie. Accordingly, the school would provide courses in the various handicrafts and hobbies, singing and drama, literature (under the auspices of the Workers' Educational Association), and child psychology. Mr. Somerset would teach at the school in the mornings; and in the afternoons he would be available for consultation and advice at a "community centre" in the old technical school building, where he could repeat at Feilding his Saturday night forums of Oxford. In the evenings ho would lecture.

Mr. Wild said it was riot, as had been erroneously stated, the start of a folk high school like those of the Scandinavians, but the transplanting of the germ of the idea to give it an opportunity of growing up under tho different New Zealand conditions