USE OF LEISURE

Taranaki Daily News, 27 May 1933, Page 9

USE OF LEISURE

VALUE OF EDUCATION LORD BLEDISLOE’S VIEWS. ADDRESS TO TEACHERS. The importance of teaching young people how to spend their leisure was stressed by the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, during the course of a speech at the teachers’ refresher course at the Auckland Training College. His Excellency, Who was accompanied by Lady Bledisloe, said he believed the time was coming when it would be imperative to educate for leisure as well as for vocation. The time was coming, although it might not be as soon as some Americans seemed to think, when, as the result of technocracy, or some such reorganisation of industry agreed upon by the civilised people of the world, a larger output of industrial products would be obtained without the necessity for the constant and continuous employment all day and every day of workers in factory and on the farm'. “Can anyone contemplate such a development without anxiety as to how the leisure thus achieved will be employed ?” asked Lord Bledisloe. “Is our education, as provided in our schools, such as will, with safety, enable the workers of the world to enjoy several hours a week, possibly several hours a day, greater leisure than in the past? If we can educate not only for vocation, but also for leisure I believe there will be more intellectually happy people in the British Empire than has ever been the case before. . . . ... .... I NEW IDEAS IN EDUCATION. “For 40 years I have been a revolutionary in matters educational because I have felt that the old methods with which I was conversant in my youth would lead a vigorous people in a competitive world nowhere,” continued His Excellency. “I rejoice, to find that ideas which shocked the hidebound educationist of the 'last century are to-day receiving approval in the most conservative quarters. Apart from character, I should place in the forefront of the objectives of a sound modem education, self-discipline, self-de-velopment in its threefold sense, creative Zeal and adaptability.” Lord Bledisloe recalled that 37 years ago he had been instrumental, with the help of a great educational pioneer, Mr. H. W. Household, in starting “school gardens” and five years later “home making centres” in Gloucestershire in face of the widespread suggestion that the former were calculated to turn all the children into farm workers and the latter into domestic servants. SCHOOL GARDEN SYSTEM. The work in the school classrooms was correlated with that in the gardens and girls in the upper standards of several neighbouring rural schools were in many cases drafted for one day a week into so-called home making centres to learn in suitable premises and under the best auspices simple carpentry,, darning and other needlework, sunpie cooking on a cottage range, laundry work, housekeeping and eventually the handling and care of infant children. Upon those foundations had been built up a most progressive and live system of primary education which even the old-fashioned reactionaries acknowledged as having fully justified itself. The provision of school gardens in Gloucestershire, Kent, Suffolk and other progressive counties in # England,- said His Excellency, not only resulted in the correlation of almost all the work in the school with that in the garden, but the development of handicrafts of various kinds. ’The main advantage of the system was that it vitalised the whole work of the school and in no way detracted from the high standard of its literary and purely intellectual activities. At the same time it put a premium under normal conditions upon immediate employment for those who were unable to carry their education to its higher grades in a secondary school or university. Lord Bledisloe was accorded a hearty vote of thanks, and Their' Excellencies were cheered as they left the hall.