By Artur Victoria
Adoption activities are another way of developing a sense of social responsibility and strengthening community sense in a school. Senior pupils can help younger ones at preschool level, during lessons, in the school library or as part of an induction process senior pupils should be allowed to lead various group activities. Senior level classes can look after new classes, for example when pupils start school or when they change from one level to another. Pupils should be enabled to participate in the planning and conduct of open air days and camp schools.
Pupils should be given the opportunity of developing different interests while working in groups under the leadership of associations, teachers, recreational staff, cultural workers, parents, fellow-pupils or other persons.
Activities at junior level can follow on from what the pupils have been accustomed to in their preschool career. The boundaries between lessons and free activities can be made flexible. Pupils may appreciate being given time during free activities to complete a task begun during lessons. Free and creative activities, singing, music, drama, pictorial work, story telling and short assemblies have a stimulating effect on the imagination and sensitivities.
At intermediate and senior levels - and already at junior level in many cases - discussions can be held of various questions arising out of the work done during lesson time or out of projects and optional courses. It is also important that constant efforts be made in various subjects to find new ways ahead and for discussions, the participation of cultural workers and representatives of associations and readings of literature to be employed as a means of encouraging the pupils to develop a full life during their leisure outside the school day.
Other activities can relate to general sporting and hobby interests and to aesthetic and ideological interests. This category includes, for example, team games, folk dancing, pictorial work and design, the care of animals and pets, orchestral music-making, motor engineering, model building and typing.
A third group of activities comprises those which are run by the leaders of various organizations. To a great extent they may be identical with other activities, but they may also form part of the youth work done by the organizations concerned. Their content must be adapted to the age and maturity of the pupils
Musical activities by pupils can acquire considerable scope. To facilitate even more extensive pupil participation than free activities allow, the headmaster may exempt pupils from lessons totaling up to 20 periods per year so as to enable them to participate in musical activities.
Schools do not provide any instruction focusing on particular preoccupations. The fields of knowledge which are to be dealt with must be fundamentally important to everybody, irrespective of their future activities. This means, for example, that schools must familiarize their pupils with questions of belief, with major issues concerning human relations and survival, with international affairs, with science and technology, with resource conservation, with environmental questions, with economic question, with questions concerning working life and labor market, with cultural questions, with family questions, with sexual matters, with immigrant affairs, with law and justice, with questions concerning road traffic, and with the hazards involved by alcohol, drugs and tobacco. All pupils must acquire a knowledge of at least one foreign language. A prominent place must be given to knowledge with an important bearing on everyday life.
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