PROPOSAL TO TEACH SCIENCE IN ADULT EDUCATION CLASSES

Wanganui Chronicle, 18 May 1950, Page 6

PROPOSAL TO TEACH SCIENCE IN ADULT EDUCATION CLASSES

WELLINGTON, Last Night (P.A.) —A national conference to review adult education is proposed by the Royal Society of New Zealand. The society is principally interested in the extension of adult education in science subjects. The council of the society at its annual meeting today decided to ask the National Council for Adult Education to consider holding a national conference in which the society would join. The society will also strongly recommend to the Council for Adult Education the appointment of fulltime science tutors and will ask the council to convene joint committees, the first on a regional basis to consider questions of science in education. The council of the society received a report from its special advisory committee containing these recommendations. A member of this committee, Dr. Gilbert Archey (Auckland) in a statement emphasising the desirability of the extension of adult education in science subjects, said it was strange that, while many scientists today were becoming concerned for public recognition of the place of science, few were actively engaged in adult education or in studying the problems involved in the increasing number of science courses in the curricula offered. If scientists wished science to be an influence in the community, they themselves must interpret its results and explain its method, and the field of adult, education offered an opportunity to do this that could not be lightly neglected.