NOT FOR TEACHERS ONLY

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1935, Page 9

NOT FOR TEACHERS ONLY

AIM OF SUMMER SCHOOL MOVEMENT VALUABLE COURSE FOR COMMUNITY SPECIAL CHOICE OF NEW PLYMOUTH 4<r pHE great thing is to make the public realise that the course of each summer school is planned with a double purpose,” said the president, Mr. D. M. Rae, in outlining the objects of the movement, “ —to provide inspirational and cultural stimulus not only for the teachers who are the students at the school, but also for the general public of the community where each yearly session is held. “The school is specially held in centres where it is hoped that the people will identify themselves with it, encourage it by their attendance, take part in its discussions, and help to solve its problems. Hand in hand with that aim goes a desire to provide an opportunity otherwise difficult to obtain to hear a series of lectures such as any one town is not often granted. “Usually the people of a community discover towards , the end of a course that they have been missing a very valuable series of lectures on topics of first-rate importance,” continued Mr. Rae, “and the result is that the addresses in the final stages of the school are given to crowded audiences. This happened at Wanganui last year. Unfortunately, the public there had not realised early enough that the summer school lectures were by no means restricted in their appeal to the traditional dominie.” For this reason, said the president, he wished the public of New Plymouth to be fully acquainted with the fact that there was an open invitation to attend not only the specially arranged evening lectures, but the ordinary day sessions also. For that purpose the programme and each time-table would be published from day to day in the Press. On the last occasion on which the school was held at New Plymouth, observed Mr. Rae, a large measure of co-operation had been shown by the public, many of whom had found the course profitable. Members of the school felt that this was in some way a small return for the hospitality shown by many service clubs and other organisations in the town which had given privileges to visiting teachers. Contrary to the possibly generally accepted idea, the school was not engaged in study of methods and aims of school-room tactics and problems peculiar to the teaching profession. Those problems, however inescapable, were set aside for the ten days’ conference, and, under the guidance of- enthusiastic leaders of various aspects of modern thought and culture—which were, after all, of the greatest importance to everybody—the school seriously set about the study of national and international problems having a bearing on all life and thought to-day. “The general tasks of the schoolroom are set aside for these ten days and the study of the world of culture forms the main occupation of the people assembled,” said Mr. Rae, in conclusion. “Art, literature, drama, music, folk-lore, and those things of the spirit which in the past have had far too little recognition in this busy young nation of ours, it is appreciation of these that the course seeks to awaken or foster in the minds of the students and the general public.”