Twelve-Years-Old Boy Resists All Efforts To Send Him To School

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 96, 7 November 1947, Page 5

Twelve-Years-Old Boy Resists All Efforts To Send Him To School

An unusually strongly rooted objection to education seems to have taken possession of the twelve-year-old son of Tui Ratahi, Edgecumbe. With evident sincerity the father told Mr E. L. Walton S.M. in the Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday that no amount of persuasion, moral or physical, would make the child attend school.

The Magistrate adjourned the Auckland Education Board’s attendance officer’s prosecution against Ratahi so that the Child Welfare Officer could investigate and report. Ratahi, for whom Mr B. S. Barry defended, admitted the attendance officer’s allegations that the child had not attended school during August and September, and that in that respect the boy was beyond parental control. He said he had thrashed the child severely on several occasions, both he and his wife had tried to reason with the boy, he (Ratahi) had taken the child to school when he went to work in the morning and left him there. He had seen the schoolmaster about it. On two occasions he had got the Police Sergeant to talk to the boy. None of it did any good. The youngster just wouldn’t go to school, though three other members of the family went regularly. The Magistrate said it would seem to be useless to punish the father for something he could not control. He evidently had made an effort to comply with the law. The case was adjourned until December 2 for a report from the Child Welfare Officer.