School for Grown-Ups

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 252, 21 April 1944, Page 3

School for Grown--Ups

HERE are two reasons why we hope our readers will examine very closely what H. C. D. Somerset has to say in this issue about Community Centres. One reason is Mr. Somerset himself, who is increasingly our foremost rural philosopher. The other is the number of people who confuse Community Centres with Civic. A Civic Centre is a conveni-ence-a grouping of administrative offices in or about a central site for economy and efficiency. It may also of course be an architectural adornment, and would be this invariably if all citizens had good taste; but whether it is or is not something that adds dignity to a city, it has almost nothing to do with the development that we asked Mr. Somerset to discuss with our. readers. Community Centre may be an unfortunate name. It certainly leaves a little more to the imagination than will be filled in’ accurately by those who know nothing in advance. But most names do that, University is a fairly precise name to those who have attended lectures, but it means very little to those whose education ends in Standard VI. and far too much to those who think they are educated when they graduate. ‘It is important to get the significance of Mr. Somerset’s remark that he went to Feilding to provide further education for those who want it and can take it. A Community Centre is therefore a place where the community further educates itself. It may or may not become in another centre the same thing externally as Feilding now has, but it will be the same thing essentially: a place where education continues. Under Mr, Somerset it will tend to continue in a particular direction. His roads end, or are always likely to end, in closer fellowship and cooperation. Under leaders of different types there could be developments in different directions, but ‘all would have this in common, that they would lead men and women along a continuous pathway of learning-helping them forward when they wanted to go, and round the corners when they felt ready to turn them.