SKI PARLIAMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 February 1939, Page 8

SKI PARLIAMENT

FRENCH NATIONAL SCHOOL. A ski parliament is held in France every year. It is composed of ski monitors possessing the official certificate of the French National Ski School and its sittings last a week. During this week the monitors compare notes and confer on the teaching of the French method of ski-ing. When French skiers carried off the international ski championships in 1937 it was thanks to a definite method elaborated by Emile Allais and Paul Gignoux, whose names, with that of the seventeen-year-old James Couttet, are now household words among skiers throughout Europe. The French method is now being taught by 250 official monitors.

The annual session of the Ski Parliament, besides comparing notes, chooses the likely skiers to form the team that will carry the national colours in the year’s international championship.

Every monitor is obliged to spend a whole month at the Vai d’lsere central school for monitors, and this compulory stage enables the responsible heads of teaching in France to see that every monitor continues to be competent, and it makes for unity of method. Ski-ing takes place in 23 departments, or counties, out of a total of 84 departments, and there are already in these 23 departments 70 permanent and 30 temporary centres for training. It is interesting to note that in these schools for ski monitors the study of English is obligatory.

Ski teaching is now a recognised profession. The diplomas of the French National Ski School are not easily obtained and the holder of such a diploma and teaching license can be relied upon. The official diploma eliminates the dubious professor and guarantees tuition along the well designed lines of the new French technique that has placed French skiers in the forefront of European champions. '■