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Show ET. A. Sets Membership Month r V P SV ,f; -if,i'MSt$&flfirf -til v - j "vr & "v.vS They9 11 Knock On Igloo Doors In Newest State When more than eleven million mil-lion P.T.A. members open their annual Membership Enrollment month this October, they will be urged to "knock on every door" to find new members interested in advancing the welfare of children. Some of those doors may open to the oldest dwellings in the Western hemisphere stone igloo ig-loo homes in Alaska, scheduled soon to become the nation's 49th state. Here, as throughout the U.S., the National Congress of Parents and Teachers will seek to add some half-million new "parents, teachers or friends of children" to what is already the nation's largest voluntary service organization. organ-ization. Mrs. James C. Parker, of Grand Rapids, Mich., president of the National Congress, cites "the dynamic potential of Alaska, Alas-ka, our newest state," as "comparable "com-parable to the spirit which has enabled Parent-Teacher associations associa-tions to contribute so much to the welfare of children." The variety and scope of P.T.A. activities in the 61-year history of "Home Is the child's first school," explains Mrs. James C. Parker, president of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, whether it's In Point Barrow, Alaska, or the continental U.S. Here, Chicago school children examine picture of Eskimo family standing under strips of caribou meat outside their far north home. In proclaiming October as P.T.A. Membership Enrollment month, Mrs. Parker points out that development of P.T.A. 's In Alaska, soon to become the nation's 49th state, parallels the organization's pioneering days in this country. ine national congress are reflected re-flected today, Mrs. Parker noted, in the everyday life of Alaskans which ranges in spirit from the quite sophisticated to the "truly frontier." Alaska's Congress of Parents and Teachers, which became part of the national organization in 1957, today faces problems which can be compared. Mrs. Parker pointed out, with those recorded over the years in tiny American communities or in its largest cities. ci-ties. For it is a land where . . . School youngsters may ride for miles in a dog sled to a crowded, poorly-heated .quonset hut, or walk across the street to a modern, several story building. Where accountants, school teachers and government workers work-ers regularly make trips "back in the bush" to hunt and fish for food for their families and store it in modern freezers. Where the airplane is the accepted ac-cepted means of travel between cities, but where the number of sled dogs is increasing. Where teachers in schools with large Eskimo or Indian populations pop-ulations must teach a second languageEnglishto lan-guageEnglishto many of their charges, while other schools, especially es-pecially those on U.S. army bases, maintain typically American libraries, lib-raries, theaters and bowling alleys al-leys as part of their recreation program. Aims of the National Congress membership month will apply equally well in this dynamic new state, Mrs. Parker pointed out, as in its member organizations throughout the continental United States, in Hawaii and on American Amer-ican military bases in Europe. "For the primary purpose- of the P.T.A.," she explained, "is to safeguard children, to build for the future in such a way that in every community the lights of home may always shine out." In designating October as the period for membership enrollment, enroll-ment, she called upon "every parent-teacher member to knock once more on the door, and at the heart, of every American, so that all of us, working together, may make America the best possible home for all our children." |