PROBLEM CHILD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 October 1940, Page 4

PROBLEM CHILD

WORK OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. PROFESSOR GOULD ADDRESSES ROTARY CLUB. “The Education of the Problem Child,” was the subject of an address given at today’s luncheon of the Masterton Rotary. Club by Professor W. H. Gould, of Victoria University College, Wellington. Professor Gould described the organisation of the Psychological Clinic at the university, its method of work and the service it performed. The clinic was a purely voluntary one, he said, staffed by members of ’he department of philosophy and education. It dealt almost exclusively with children who were in some way exceptional—backward, delinquent, neurotic —or whose parents or teachers thought they were. The clinic, Professor Gould pointed out, endeavoured to ascertain the cause of the exceptional behaviour and gave advice on its findings. It was not staffed to provide treatment. During the past year it had examined and prescribed treatment for 37 cases of children varying in age from two years to 16 years and in defect, from inability to learn to read to persistent theft.