USE OF LEISURE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19378, 16 July 1937, Page 5

USE OF LEISURE

PREPARING THE WAY EDUCATION PROBLEMS TEACHERS' INFLUENCE EXPERIENCE ABROAD (Special to the Herald.) AUCKLAND, this day. 'ln so far as we do things for ourselves our learning lives, and we acquire ability to grapple with problems as they arise," said Dr. William Boyd, the head of the Department of Education at Glasgow University, when speaking on leisure time education at the New Education Fellowship conference yesterday.

Dr. Boyd said that he believed that at no other period in history had people been so interested in the problem of leisure, a problem that raised all of the big issues of modern life. Democracy had come through leisure, and the culture that was inseparable from leisure had blossomed in small countries such as Greece, Palestine and Italy.

"Small peoples can do big things," added Dr. Boyd, who wondered whether New Zealanders had realised their potentialities. "Leisure is an individual matter," he continued. "II you fill up the lives of other people you spoil their type of life. One man's leisure is another man's poison."

Pupils should leave the schools vigorous, competent-minded and selfreliant. In the schools at present there was not sufficient room for the children's interests, and they were taught too much of a by-gone culture. Co-Education Needed Dr. Boyd also affirmed the necessity for co-education, which he described as "simple, plain common-sense." Boys and girls, he said, must learn together to live together. "To make the work of the school successful the teachers must work with the parents," stated Dr. Paul L. Dengler, director of the AustroAmerican Institute of Education, Vienna, in a seminar address yesterday. Instancing his own experience, he said that by bringing parents into his school and letting them see how drab and uncomfortable it was, he was able to provide pleasant surroundings for the class.

Speaking on the development ot children between the ages of seven and 11 years, Dr. Susan Isaacs, head of the Department of Child Development, London University in an address in the Technical College Hall, said that the growth of social relations during this period resulted in intense loyalty to those children of similar age. This involved a certain amount of disinterest in those possessing an older or younger mentality.

Another marked characteristic was the growth of instinctive competition. Rivalry and imaginative interests were vivid and intense. In arranging a curriculum to suit children of this age care should be taken to provide sufficient elasticity to include all interests that the child collected through his past experience and worK.

BENEFIT TO DOMINION LECTURES BY EXPERTS POSSIBLE NEW SCHEMES (Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. After a session of five working days, the regional conference of the New Education Fellowship was concluded by a social gathering in the Town Hall last night.

A full programme of seminars and lectures was again followed to-day, the final addresses being delivered to an audience approaching 3000 by Dr. Edmund de S. Brunner and Dr. Pam Dengler, who detailed their impressions 5 of the present international situation, focussing attention on modern developments in educational practice overseas. The conference was attended frequently by audiences of 1500 teachers and others mterested in education and the exposition of technical developments in Bntisn, Continental and American schools and universities attracted keen attention The opinions expressed by the visiting experts are considered important m the light of New Zealand conditions, and several teachers expressed the option that many of the schemes outlined would undoubtedly be put into practice.