NEWSPAPERS IN SCHOOLS

Taranaki Daily News, 23 June 1934, Page 16 (Supplement)

NEWSPAPERS IN SCHOOLS

PUPILSh WEEKLY STUDY. EXPERIMENT IN CHRISTCHURCH. In order to encourage the pupils to take a personal interest in current events an innovation has been adopted at the Christchurch Technical College. Twice each week 20 copies of the day’s newspapers are distributed through the classrooms and every class is devoting a certain time every week to the study of current events, political, international, literary, scientific and financial. The principal of the college, Dr. D. E. Hansen, emphasised to a representative of the Press that the half period devoted by each class each week' to newspaper study would not be regarded as formal class work. There would be enough copies of the newspapers available to provide one for every two children, and the teacher would merely encourage them to read and think about and possibly discuss what they read. “The main purpose at the back of our minds,” said Dr. Hansen, “is to make our children intelligent newspaper readers. The daily newspapers are the most up-to-date sources of information which exist. Text books are all very well up to a point, but they cannot, in their nature, contain such recent information as the newspapers.” It is not intended to conduct tests or examinations of any kind in the subjects the pupils read about. “That would make it into a task—a thing we want to avoid as far as possible,” said Dr. Hansen. “We want to teach the children to handle the newspaper just as they would if they were reading it at home. We want them to take an interest in it for themselves, not because they have to study it to pass examinations.”