Welsh Journals

Let Gower be your teacher by GRIFFITH MORGAN WE WELCOMED TO OUR MEETINGS, our walks and folk-dancing last autumn pupils from secondary schools in Oxfordshire who were attending residential courses at Kilvrough we were delighted to have the company of these young people and their teachers. We hope that we learned from one another two things come to mind the comment by one young person, after an energetic session of folk-dancing in which he and his friends had been persuaded to take part that this was as good as the Twist and the comment by one of our most knowledgeable and experienced members, after meeting and talking to one party, that they had learned as much about the area surrounding Kilvrough as he knew. They walked and explored Gower, and studied at first hand its local history, geography, scenery and plant-life, as well as getting to know the industries and occupations of Swansea and its surroundings. The magazine we received from one school is a delightful record of their work. Articles and stories recall an at times naive, but always lively interest in the history of Gower and the surroundings of Swansea poems and pictures give their feelings about scenery and experiences. This is the fruit of a lively search for real knowledge, not a graveyard of historical facts. The whole effect is of children learning at first hand, enjoying themselves as they learn, and knowing that this is real life, not a predigested and tired story from a book. Since we who love Gower feel and learn in this way, in our walks and talks, we are glad that others have shared this. These children were not the academic cream they are the Newsom children, the more than half our future who will be the ordinary men and women of the community. We trust that they have not only learned to use their reading, writing and art to picture their experience but that they will have a love and respect for the countryside as they grow up, ard an appreciation of the other places and other people they have had a chance to get to know, outside their own community. One admires the forward- thinking of an education authority which makes such use of residential courses, and the devotion of the teachers who make this possible. This is a growing point in education. The Newsom Report urged experiments of this kind, to bring our secondary school children into contact with the places and vocations of real life. We read of other schemes through which children come to stay