FREE KINDERGARTENS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 93, 17 October 1934, Page 17

FREE KINDERGARTENS

NEW ZEALAND STANDARD

(Special to the "Evening Post.") DUNEDIN, This Day. Miss Eone Wilkie, a Dunedin kindergarten teacher, who has returned from a Visit to Great Britain and America on the invitation of the Carnegie Foundation, in tin interview said that on the whole. New Zealand kin dorcartons compared very favourably with those abroad. They were on a higher average plane than those of America. Of course there were soino woll-equippod and modern institutions in. America, but then there were others in the slum areas that were most antiquated places. Since there were not so many foreign or poor children in the Dominion, the better conditions in this country made it possible to have kindergartens of a more uniformly high, standard. While she was in New York Miss Wilkie stayed at International House where the hostess was Miss Neige Todhunter, hailing from Christchurch. Miss Todliunter had since resigned to take up a professorship in California which was previously held by another New Zealander, Miss K. Landruth. "At International House there are students from all over the world," said Miss Wilkie. "There was one girl from' China who looked about, sixteen, but she was the principal of three large normal training colleges. A negro girl from Africa turned out to be a brilliant student doing cancer research, and there were representatives from Abyssinia, Japan, "and Rumania, in fact from 57 countries in all. The Chinese students, of whom there were many, were mostly holders of Boxer Rebellion scholarships. The Germans kept much to themselves. They were sensitive and reticent."