THE COUNTRY WOMAN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 168, 15 October 1941, Page 5

THE COUNTRY WOMAN

FORTHCOMING FIELD DAYS'

SCHEDULE OF DATES

In a special circular to country women who will be interested in the forthcoming Field Days to be held throughout this district, the promoters (the Advisory Committee of Adult Education state: —

Homcmaking is not work we all knoAv In- instinct. It involves, much skill and much knowledge and understanding. Much more of that knowledge is available to-day than in the last generation. More than ever New Zealand depends upon the efficiencj 7 of its women who turn readily to meet any demand for work or service with our hands. But are they as ready to work with their brains. The special difficulties are these: (a) More work to do on the farms owing to the shortage of men; (b) demands for Red Cross and other

emergency work; (c) lack of petrol. All however can be overcome by the attendance one during the year at Field* Days which will be open to all women, irrespective of whether they are from the covin try or not.

Here is the programme for the district: ® Matata, October 20, Te Teko, October 21, Edgocumbe, October 23, Thornton, October 24, Otakiri, October 27, Awakcri, October 28, Whakatane, October 29, Waimana, October 30 and Taneatua, October 31. The Field Day programme will commence at 10.30 a.m.. and will take place in the district halls. After a community luncheon it will close at 3 p.m. The lecturer will be Mrs D. E. Johnson the Tutor-organiser of the movement who has recently returned from the States where she lias made a special study of socialogy and other subjects which'present the problems of the. day. All will be Avelcome and the programme which has been promoted by the joint committee of the Provincial Committee of the W.D.F.U.'s and Federations of the Women's Institutes is dedicated to the service of the women folk of this district for a period of ten days. Food for thought is furnished by the following quotation which has been presented to us—an extract from the work of W. C. Braithwaite: Educate! educate! educate! is the urgent watchword. The English character has admirable qualities, but this character is not a fixed unchanging thing, it may lose something of its soberness of judgement, its fair mindedness, its love of liberty;, it must be perpetually quickened and enriched if it is to be maintained in vigour. The people we must educate are ourselves, and we should learn not vacantly out of books or passively at the feet of authority in the pulpit or on the platform, but actively in association with one another, by. the lifegiving contact of life with life, with full opportunities for questions and discussions, and personal talk, not dogmatically with the object of enforcing conclusions but rather by asking questions and bringing inspiration and personal knowledge into a common slock, which will help each member to do his own

thinking, and make his own discoveries of truth." Could we seek to do that in this movement of women's education? This is a summary of Mr Braithwaite's ideas. 1. Drawing out and developing hidden faculties. 2. Making the body the obedient servant of the personality.^ 3.'" Learning to think —to .'measure and compare. 4. To imagine—to reconstruct the past and to anticipate the future. 5. To understand what is going on around us. fj. To collect data before giving judgment, to hear both sides. 7. To remember. 8. To educate and control emotions.