MAKING LIVES COUNT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 December 1938, Page 8

MAKING LIVES COUNT

THE PURSUIT OF IDEALS AT SOLWAY PRINCIPAL’S IMPRESSIVE SURVEY. AN ENDURING FELLOWSHIP. ' “In. this girls’ school we are concerned not so much with the mass production of examination results, as with the individual girl,” said the Principal of Solway College (Mrs M. B. Thompson, M.A.), in her annual report presented last evening. “An annual report cannot tabulate the immaterial influences that lead to the fulness and enjoyment of life that are the real objectives of education, but they can be considered.

“The community life is a pre-emin-ent factor of education in a residential school in that the girls learn to live together. It gives opportunities for service for others, inside and outside, and it makes for fellowship, the absence of divisions. Class distinctions, sectarian differences, even the division between secular and sacred disappear. Life itself is one and indivisible. Our Old Girls have made us feel that they have sensed at school this fellowship which implies a working share in life and a family life in which there is mutual trust.

“Christian teaching is the purpose of the Church school because it leads to fulness of life. In the daily Scripture lesson are the ministry, the responsibility and the opportunity of the school. The Bible circles under the leadership of the senior girls and freed from the domination of teachers, provide opportunities for the discussion the growing mind demands. The outcome is is that over thirty girls have, been received into the membership of ’ the Christian church. How much that will mean in future years will depend on the two other great partners in Christian education —the Church and the home. Parents need imagination as much as teachers. As teachers we quarrel with examiners who expect intellectual maturity, and through lack of imagination we can expect a religious maturity and mistake ‘the volatility of youth for disloyalty, its gaiety for flippancy.’ “A world shadowed by war and a sense of insecurity is not an easy world in which to be young. Our young people will need courage, and they have the right to the sense of security that comes from experience and understanding of parents and teachers. We do not idealise our girls, but we know that many of them deeply want their lives to count and to stand for Christian values. Church and home and school can only serve them by understanding, imagination and love. For that service the Spirit of Jesus Christ is our only asset. Touched by that Spirit in our home and community life our girls will find the quietness and confidence that are strength.”