SPEECH DAY We were afraid that the weather was going to play one ofits usual tricks,for after a lovely week it broke on Thursday and poured with rain all night. Friday,October 1st,turned outcloudyand threatening, but kept sufficiently fine to allow oftea being served on the Chapel Close to some hundreds of very appreciative visitors. It is said by so many people, that it must be true, that there is a friendliness and informality about our Speech Days which greatly impresses. This is good,and as we would like it to be. Our guest of honour.Professor Birley,ex-Headmaster ofEton and Charterhouse, made the same comment,both by word ofmouth and later by letter. So may it ever be. The Chairman of the Board, Mr. H. W. Haley, who had dashed back from America just in time, set the pace with words of tribute and appreciation for all that is being done for and at Kearsney,and spoke of harmony and progressiveness. He not only welcomed all the parents and others who crammed the Hall, but accorded special greetings to Dr. R. Birley. The Headmaster, Mr. J. H. Hopkins,then presented his report, the substance of which is reproduced below. He laid especial stress upon his educational findings during his recent visit overseas; on some of the weaknesses of our present examination system; on the need to cater for boys of very differing mentality in the same school; and ofhis great excitement over the usefulness ofthe newly-installed Language Laboratory. After presenting the Sixth Form Prizes (listed below)— a rather monotonous route march on the part ofthe same boys— Dr. Birley addressed the schooland visitorsin the easy and light-hearted manner which becomes him, but by means of which he nevertheless puts across a serious message. He felt, he said, that he really had some intimate connection with Kearsney, as a Methodist School, for he had been for a dozen years Headmaster of Charterhouse, where John Wesley was educated. In fact, while prowling round some old cupboards, he had found a school text-book (they only changed text-books about once a century in those days) in which John Wesley's name was scribbled in very childish handwriting. (We would rather like to have had that in our archives!) Under the cir cumstances therefore he did not feel entirely a stranger within the confines of a Methodist School. Thinking of the Language Laboratory particularly, Dr. Birley expressed the hope that French would find its way more and more on to its tapes. He said (and this, as we had expected, found the headlinesin the Press nextday)that Freneh is now the majorlanguage of Africa, and that this country is going to need people who speak French; that those who aim at really high posts of authority are going to find the need to be trilingual. .tf)
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