THE ART EXHIBITIONS There was a wide divergence in the amount of advantage the pupils derived from the cultural functions. The paintings interested most of the children; art is an important subject on our school syllabus which children are encouraged to take for School Certificate. The children love illustrating poems, stories, or social studies notes; in any book they always study the illustrations most attentively. Furthermore, in the galleries they could walk around and go to what interested them; they did not have to sit still. We could profitably have spent more than the two half-hours we gave to looking at paintings. At the “Life in New Zealand” exhibition, William Jones, the Auckland artist, gave the children a short talk about the paintings shown.

BIBLICAL DRAMA We found The Waters of Kidron to be a most suitable play. It was acted with professional skill. and in spite of its deficiencies, its religious theme was deeply significant to the children, partly because religion is the chief interest in the devoutly Mormon community and religious education is intensive. It was interesting to find, however, that in spite of the many hours devoted to religious study, few of the children knew the story of Judas. The Headmaster told it to the pupils at the community centre just before the play started. The chief action in the play was summarised with chilling exactitude in an essay by one of our fourth form pupils: “When Judas meets Anubis (a beautiful maiden devoted to the service of the Alexandrian Aphrodite) “he tells her he believes in one God only. Abubis tries to make him fall for her and think there are more Gods than one. Finally she succeeds. She then tries to find out how much money he has; in loving her so very much he becomes a traitor and helps to take Jesus away. When he returns he discovers that his so called sweetheart has gone to Rome with a soldier called Marcus. Knowing now that the money is of no more use to him, Judas goes mad and from that day to this many people say that Judas still roams the roads.” Naturally, Coppard's over-simplification did not worry the children who loved to see the accomplished acting on the stage—Anubis, beautiful, deceptive, and evil; Judas, stupid, also bad, and finally punished; the High Priest, an even greater villain, and Marcus, just a happy-go-lucky fellow.

MUSICAL EDUCATION The musical events were the greatest challenge because the children in our group are mostly by nature musical, but were quite unfamiliar with the type of music they heard at the festival. Not only that; the children are deeply influenced by jazz, rock-and-roll, and the spirit of youthful rebellion, the creed of which is centred in this music. Classical music is therefore apt to be listened to not with sympathy or even neutrality, but as the epitome of meaningless boredom: the “square” may be powerful—one has to live with him—but as music is the world of pleasure, he should be kept out of it. Educators cannot help but clash with this confined world of pleasure. If they left it to evolve freely, it would be necessary to remove most school subjects from the syllabus. In music, as in other subjects, educators wish to widen the children's experience and to enable them to respond to music in more varied manifestations. Our starting point was a lecture given at the Adult Education Centre by Mr Ronald Barker. The theme is his talk was “I am a square and I am proud of it”: he discussed the music we were to hear at the festival. It was followed immediately by the Wind Quintet. The programme contained quite a solid work by Hinemith and was perhaps in parts too difficult as an introduction. The environment was a hall in the Art Gallery, with good modern paintings: the public at this luncheon concert consisted mainly of musical connoisseurs and the atmosphere was far more intimate than at the usual evening concert. We found later that the concert made quite an impression on a number of the children—Wiri was the only militant objector. Morris liked the concert far too well, applauded like a cannon, and had to be stopped from tapping his feet to the music. The school concert of the National Orchestra was, of course, far easier to understand. Again the reactions were mixed; the experience certainly did not stimulate any increased interest in the remaining musical event, Madame Butterfly, that same evening. The 15 seats we had were occupied with considerable reluctance and even feelings of envy towards those who had made the Cinerama. When Morris found he was the only boy volunteer he hastily withdrew; our final party consisted entirely of girls. There was nothing doubtful about their reaction. They were deeply moved by the beauty and pathos of the whole performance; they felt sorry for the others who had not been there. Since our return we have played to the children a recording called “The Adventures of Piccolo, Saxie and Company”, an amusing symphonic piece during which Victor Borge introduces, in story form, the instruments of a symphony orchestra. Before the tour this piece would hardly have been understood, but now the children were delighted by it; the instruments mean something to them now, and so does symphonic music. The experience laid a foundation for the appreciation of the mainstream of European music.

WE ALL BECOME LIKE LITTLE INSECTS The tour had its Haroun al Raschid. When we were looking over the TEAL factory at Mechanics Bay, and admiring the delicate instruments with