3. The cultural programme. In addition we paid a quick visit to the zoo. In the planning of the first two sections we received useful advice from the Auckland Public Relations Office. This office has a brief list of places it always recommends to wandering schools; on this list we found such establishments as the railway station, the post office, the Tip Top Ice Cream factory, and New Zealand Glass Manufacturers, all of which we visited. In addition, this office holds information on a large number of enterprises where visits are permitted. For instance we wished to visit a clothing factory, preferably one employing Maori girls, so that our own girls could visualise the sort of vocation they might find in Auckland. The Public Relations Office was at once able from its records to name a clothing factory willing to receive school parties (the Cambridge Clothing Factory in Customs Street) and it was the same with all our inquiries. As many establishments will not admit more than a specified number of children, it was necessary on three occasions to split the party into two sections; also, most firms will only accept parties on certain days or at certain hours, so that the whole tour timetable needs to be carefully planned. One factory we could not visit, because bookings are taken three months ahead.

THE FARMERS' TRADING COMPANY Most valuable for our commercial practice students was the well conducted tour of the office of the Farmers' Trading Company. Here preliminary classroom work on the company and its office system would have been well worth while had we been able to get the necessary information in advance. The Farmers' have five types of accounts (cash, monthly, lay-by, time payment, and savings bank) and the system used for each type of trading is explained in full detail by a very competent officer. What impressed the children most was the microfilming of monthly statements—so many million statements in one small cupboard. Visitors are also shown the cycle billing system, the method of checking and analysing cash, the multigraph room, and the records system. However, some teachers may find some difficulty in moving all of the young back-country visitors down the escalators, past six stories of sumptuous displays, into the open air.

THE CULTURAL PROGRAMME The cultural part of our programme was the furthest removed from the past experience of the Punaruku children, and therefore the most challenging. Our cultural programme was ambitious, from the viewpoint that the school tour would, for most of our children, provide the only opportunity for cultural experiences such as the Auckland Festival offers. Furthermore it was hard to prepare the children fully for all the functions because the final festival timetable did not get printed until the very end of the first term, and the full programme, which provided essential background for teaching, came later still. Here is the list of things we saw and heard: Stage Struck, one of the films shown by the Auckland Festival Society; A chamber-music concert by the New Zealand Wind Quintet; Brief visit to the Auckland Art Gallery; The Waters of Kidron, a play by J. A. S. Coppard, produced for the Festival Society by John Thomson; School Concert of the National Orchestra; Madame Butterfly, presented by the New Zealand Opera Company; Visit to an exhibition of paintings entitled “Life in New Zealand”, at the Society of Arts rooms. In these arrangements we were given wonderful help by the Festival organisers, who also arranged concession prices. Apart from Madame Butterfly, for which only 15 seats were booked, we took our whole group to all these occasions. Those who did not go to Madame Butterfly were taken to the Cinerama, a contrivance none of the children had seen before.