OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 April 1943, Page 3

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

COLLEGE ASSEMBLY HALL (To the Editor) Sir, —It was with great satisfaction that I read, in your paper, of the decision of the Wairarapa College Board with regard to dancing in the College Hall. To those of us who have been fortunate enough to have a fairly extensive secondary school education, the buildings and grounds of the school are symbolic of common sense and decency. It is at school that-we are made fit for the life ahead. There impressions which might easily last for life are formed. School life for the boy or girl in the early ’teens is far more than the mere swallowing of text-book knowledge, for at school our characters begin to develop, we begin to look at life and the world round about us through eyes which are no longer closed completely by dependence on parents. When all the symbolism of school life is wrecked by the intrusion forcefully and otherwise of the riff-raff of the town, the schoolboy is bound to form wrong impressions. And who can blame him? Mr Jones, the College Board and the Parents’ Association, deserve the appreciation and sincere thanks of all those who have the welfare of the Wairarapa College and its pupils at heart. There are many Wairarapa College Old Boys in Wellington at present and I know that I voice their sentiments as well as my own. Let us try to make our towns better places in which to live by allowing youth in its most impressionable years to get the right impressions.—l am, etc., FRANK V. MADDEN. Wellington, April 15.