DISCIPLINE FOR BOYS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 June 1938, Page 8

DISCIPLINE FOR BOYS

FACTORS OF IMPORTANCE. That boys at school should be taught by men, and that if through misconduct they find themselves in the juvenile Courts they should be handled by men probation officers, was demanded by Mr A. E. Evans, of Liverpool, in his presidential address to the English National Association of Schoolmasters. Mr Evans urged that the right type of teacher —men teachers, even for little boys of the junior school—at a time when habits were being formed was a factor of vital importance, but one which had not received the recognition it deserved. Allied to this principle was that of men probation officers for boys. It was nothing short of farcical to ask women probation officers to exert the right influence upon boys who had already kicked over the traces. Reality and common sense demanded that men should do this work, he said. "A propel’ discipline,” Mr Evans added, “is at the root of the matter, discipline of and in the home, in the school, at play, and in leisure hours. Leaders of personality are necessary to give guidance and to exercise control and restraint, and not such as those whose sole qualification is a banal vanity to march alongside a troop of little boys behind a band.”