PLACE OF INSPIRATION

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1935, Page 9

PLACE OF INSPIRATION

ABOVE DAILY ANXIETY LECTURING MADE A DELIGHT. IMPRESSIONS OF SUMMER SCHOOL. (By Mr. J. W. Shaw, M.A.) I went to my first summer school with an open mind. I had heard others speak of the movement with more than enthusiasm. Mr. Rae almost swept me off my feet; for,he was the prophet and missionary of the idea in the north and his Celtic fervour easily communicates itself even to such non-inflammable southern material as constitutes most of my makeup. I suspended judgment and decided to go and see for myself. My doubts were of the sort that would readily suggest themselves to any mind of a critical turn. So many novelties have lifted their heads for a brief hectic season and then vanished, unwept, unhonoured and unsung, into the dark and backward abysm of time. Was this simply another fad to add to the long list the desire for some new thing has inflicted on a very patient and long-suffering humanity? Could anything really worth-while be accomplished in so short a time? Would the students’ attitude to the instructional side of the school justify the amount of work demanded of a conscientious lecturer, and warrant the sacrifice of a fortnight’s holiday? In this frame of mind I joined the lecturing staff at the second Cambridge Summer School. I had not been there a couple of days before I knew the atmosphere was right. Here was the mental attitude that made lecturing a delight. • Here was sincere mental curiosity that gave the true clash of mind with mind without which teaching has no more inspiration than filling bags with coal. A man with any feeling for mass atmosphere was put on his mettle at once and could not help giving the best that' was in him. In such an environment one could leave the mere elements and climb to the rarer heights in the upper air. What might have been a perfunctory holiday task became an . inspiration; every minute of it, to the lecturer at least, supremely worth while. Each subsequent experience of the movement simply deepened the impressions created by the first. The summer school has come to stay, and its continued success is the finest testimony J can imagine to the spirit of the teaching profession, and its determination to lift its work into the highest relations and to interpret it in the light of the highest ideals. ■ . The social side of the school gives unlimited opportunity for that intimate contact of personality with personality which the conditions of teaching in our wide and thinly populated spaces make always difficult and often impossible. All sorts of types of teachers meet onterms of frankest camaraderie. One is free from the urgent local problem that sits like black care bn the shoulders or ®very teacher concentrated on his own

immediate task, and through that focussing of interest, unconsciously magnifying its difficulties and its uniqueness. All the rest of the company are facing the same music for the greater part of the year. Here one can rise above the press of daily anxieties, not by forgetting them for a few vacation weeks, but by rising above them and seeing them in their true perspective. The sense, of isolation, often the great distorter of the teacher’s vision of relative values, is broken down. The group companionships outside the lecture --room, when the ideas started by the discussions can be tracked down in their wider significance and relations, and when each can freely express his own reaction to them, deepen and widen the instructional value of the school. I know that I found the pleasure of the lecture-room flow over into a still deeper satisfaction in the dozens of talks with individuals and groups on the high matters, we had been considering, more formally, perhaps, from the platform. The aim of the school, as 1 see it, is to broaden the teacher’s cultural interests. The lecturers have had the chance to became specialists in . certain subjects. They are able to keep in touch with the latest developments in their particular line of research. At ths school they can communicate what they have been able to gather of sound knowledge and inspiration, and if possible can hand on some of their enthusiasm. I have used each school I have attended to sit at the feet of the other lecturers. I do not think I have missed one lecture that my own engagements made it possible for me to attend. I do not know when I experlencedx'Uch another feast of reason and flow of soul. Just think: I who have had to concentrate on the subject of my own special interests, have been brought up-to-date in the significance of present-day world movements by being permitted to share in the vast treasures of Mr. Milner. The fruit of a lifetime of close research was there merely for the taking. And it was presented with the clarity and the interest of a master expositor. With Mr. Andersen, a born teacher, I followed the Maori in his migrations, learned string games from the ancients of the tribes, and tracked the elusive songbird to its retreat in the heart of the forest. Whatever a lecturer may be able to give the school from his own stores of knowledge and experience in the final assay, I am sure he will find that he has gained as much as he has given. I hope the members of the school have an experience similar to mine. The ordinary technique of the class-room, the daily recurring problems of method, are not touched by the school. The idea is to bring fresh inspiration and enthusiasm to the teacher. If we can enrich his mind, if we can bring the fructifying impulses of a wider culture into . stimulating contact with his personality, we are making him a bigger man.. And if he is a bigger man he will inevitably ba a better teacher. Increase his reservoir of ideas and feeling, and the stored forces will flow in richer stream into the lives of his pupils. Broaden his outlook and you deepen the personality. The increase of the treasures of his mind and heart is not a thing he can keep to himself. Even the youngest child will catch something from his vision. And many of the best things in education are caught, not taught