NOT BACKWARD BUT VERY FORWARD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 318, 27 July 1945, Page 10

NOT BACKWARD BUT VERY FORWARD

Brian Knight And His School For Difficult Children —

OU never saw a stranger school in all your born days than Brian Knight’s hostel in Auckland. Just now there are about 20 pupils, 17 of whom live in the hostel, the other three coming, apparently willingly, from near by. I am _ giving the numbers only approximately because you never really know if everyone will be there. The ages of these pupils range from five up to 14 years. But besides these young people there are two girls of 16 and one of 21 living in the hostel and working dailyone works in a nursery school, one is a typist and the third is in.a factory. And besides these again there are between 50 and 100 clinic cases, children and adults, coming regularly to the hostel for treatment. "If only people would get it out of their heads that I am running a school for backward childten," Brian Knight complained to me the first time I visited the hostel. "I could tell them that my ‘backward children’ have included two people now with B.A. degrees, a civil engineer, two fully-trained nurses and various other people of ability. It could be called a school for abnormal people, but certainly not for subnormal ones." The name of it is the Brian Knight Hostel and Clinic and it is controlled by a board of trustees of a comparatively new organisation known as the Institute for Remedial Education, an incorporated society whose officials include a woman who is a member of the Auckland City Council, two medical men, an accountant, and several men and women occupying public positions in Auckland. The staff for the hostel and clinic numbers eight, including the director, Brian Knight This has been the organisation for the last eighteen months. Before that the history of the hostel was the history of Brian Knight himself. He Wanted to Teach He went to school in Auckland, took his degree at Auckland University College and trained: for teaching at the Auckland Teachers’ Training College. After that he spent five years in solecharge and other primary schools in the Auckland district. About his experiences at one, Nihotupu, in the Waitakere Ranges, he wrote a book called Nine to Three and After, published in 1940, It is the book of that very happy person, the right man in the right job. He wanted to teach and he was teaching. But he wanted to teach the pupils in difficulties and found a growing tendency in himself to leave the bright ones alone while he devoted himself to helping those others. For several years he took part in radio sessions (the most important were 1ZB’s Child Psychology session and Radio School conducted by the Friendly |

Man) in which he used a question-and-answer method of helping not only scholars in ‘difficulty, but also their parents. In addition he gave individual coaching for examinations and worked with "problem children" brought to him for advice by worried parents. It seemed to me he had always had a particular interest in coaching and individual teaching and I asked him if it was so. "That’s what built the spine of the whole thing-the coaching and so on," he said. "First you find the lower ranges of the class-I’m not saying dul/l-need individual help. Then you find that the problems are of two kinds — simple education problems (oh, short cuts in arithmetic, the sensibleness of geometry and so on), which can be easily fixed, or very very deep-seated emotional problems which can’t be easily fixed. They need individual attention, but also constant attention-obvious answer: hostel. So we began by taking them into our house, my wife and I, and gradually the hostel idea grew." A Question of Money For three years the idea was growing, somewhat painfully. at times, in Mr. Knight’s house, a small one. Then four years ago he moved with his big family (he has three children of his own as well) into a big house at Epsom. He and his wife (a teacher too) and a small staff taught and fed and clothed and cleaned. And that’s his hostel-upstairs and down-

stairs, big kitchen, big sunny rooms, dormitories with big windows, everything big except one room-his own study. The trouble was, he explained, he was nearly as often on the rocks and worrying about how to meet expenses as he was worrying about the legitimate business of solving the problems of his charges. In ‘emergencies he had even turned to the kitchen to become the cook. "What did you do for money?" I asked, bold measures being the kind Mr. Knight seems to expect-and take.

"Well, the ones who could, paid. The others didn’t. If too many didn’t I had to go out and get it." "How? " "By going and asking for it. Just going and asking for it." "Companies or individuals?" "Oh, individuals mostly. You know so-and-so? And_ so-and-so? They’ve always helped when I needed it. Firms have been very good, too. For instance, yesterday one firm sent along a load of sand for the sandpit which up till then had been merely a pit lacking the sand. But I have to get money*like that in my own way. And that’s all over now, thank heaven." That’s all over now because the Institute has taken over and Mr. Knight is a teacher again; at least, that’s the idea of having a board of trustees: they take over the administration worries and it doesn’t hurt anyone individually if a needy pupil can’t pay the full feesor even any fees. % * * OST of this I knew already when I first went to see the hostel. Mr. Knight had been to a trustees’ meeting and took me out with him afterwards. There is some native bush along the. drive at the hostel, good old-fashioned hide-and-seek stuff, I thought. At the top of the terrace, near the hostel, we came on a hut built of sacking and branches, obviously the result of many hours of toil. We had a look. Everything was neat, there seemed. to be a purpose for everything, even for the peep-hole overlooking the drive up from the gate. Mr. Knight was standing on what was obviously meant for duck-boards. How many had built it, I wanted to know. "Well, it’s the whole tearn. The ringleader was a flaming obstructionist.when he came here. An anarchist. Wouldn’t do a thing. Now he’s got the lot of them working in gangs-I’ve even seen him lining them up and numbering them off. He’s the government." At the corner, facing the drive, was a notice board on top of a stick. z "More government," said Mr. Knight. "That'll say No admittance. By order." We went round to see. It did not say (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) No Admittance. By order. It said, in crooked capitals: KEEP OUT OF BOUNDS. Someone had obviously been reading the military notices. "How long has he been here? How old is he?" I asked. "He’s 14. Been here five years," Mr. Knight said. I felt somewhat breathless at the idea of a "flaming obstructionist" of nine years. When I regained my breath I said so. "Oh, but he was. The day he came here he rushed straight for a wall and wrote an obscene expression all over it. Then he started in on a tour of the hostel saying the same word to everyone he met. For four solid hours he made no other remark, but he made that one every two seconds or so. None of us made any remark in reply." "And the result?" ."No particular result at once. He got tired of saying the word, but he still

4esusea tO eat, refused to sit down, refused to stand up, refused to go to bed, refused to go outside, refused to go inside-just refused on principle. That's a common trouble. His language varied -but it was full of colour. Come and see him now." We went round the corner of the hostel and came upon a group of children with three teachers. It seemed to be storytime in the sun. A beautiful face, one of the most beautiful faces I

nave ever seen, was lifted from a book, was turned round so that the eyes and the mouth could ‘join in the smile with which I, as a visitor, and especially Mr. Knight, who had been away at least an hour and a-half, should be greeted. "This is Terry,’ Mr. Knight said. We had a conversation about his hut. He listed his gang, pointed each member out, told me the different things still to be done. His voice and his way of talking were as charming as his face. A flaming obstructionist! Later I asked Mr. Knight if Terry was Irish; I had seen a boy as beautiful once and he was Irish. "No. He’s French. At the end of the year he’ll be going to join his father on the farm." "Ts that all right? Is that what he wants to do?" "That’s all right. That’s what he wants. He’s no obstructionist any more. He’s got initiative and he’s handy. He'll be right on the farm." * * 7 SOUNDS of wailing came from a big box. "That’s Peter. He’s our grouser. We always have a grouser and Peter’s our current one. He probably wants Johnny’s bit of coke. They play in the coke bin for pleasure I imagine. Johnny’s the

youngest here, he’s the one with the white hair." We bent over the coke bin. Neither had white hair. But it was true that Peter wanted Johnny’s bit of coke. Mr. Knight set him to work to find another piece like it. We went inside, watching out of a window as the house-mother, Mrs, Morrison, organising a firewood drive, put a bundle of sticks into a small boy’s arms. "Take them inside, Tim, take them inside," she said, thrusting him gently a few steps on his path. He stood still for a while and then wandered off the track, gazed at the sky, dropped all the sticks, stood staring apparently at nothing. His particular trouble was that he was, but not in the manner of Macbeth, infirm of purpose; forgot what he was doing, almost as he began doing it. He was eight years old, he hadn't been there long, and yes, probably he would be all right soon. It mostly depended on why he was like that. You find out why and then you can begin to put the thing right. Mr. Knight told me this, as well as pretty well every-

thing else he told me about his work, in the most matter-of-fact way. In all my _ convergations with him I heard him use only two words of what I shun as "the jargon of psychology." And try as I can I just can’t think of what circumlocution he could have used in place of those two technical terms. I mentioned this to him and he brushed it off: there’s no need to use the jargon, that was just a silly fashion, he said in effect.

Johnny arrived at the door, screeching like»a rusty nail on a tin. "Mitter Knight, Mitter Knight, Peter wantochopmyhead!" "What's that?" "Peter says put my head on the block and chop it all up!" "Well, you tell Peter to put his own head on the block and chop it up first." A terrific whirl of legs, staccato of voices; the huge joke was told, repeated, giggled over, told again, repeated round and round the chopping block. * * bo SOON Peter would find something else |> to grouse over: in the meantime the wood-gathering received a rush of energy, hands scraped up and grabbed up the sticks, there began a wobbly trail to the house-Peter, Johnny, Myrtle, Michael, stumbling over their own feet, giggling, complaining, boasting, dropping half their untidy armloads of sticks and leaves and brush. Behind came the housemother, bending to scoop up the gleanings, urging her mule-train on till at last everyone reached the school-room, the strewn firewood and the big fireplace ready for the fire. Someone had to’ move his house-building operations, someone had to budge with her paper and her chalks-but there was plenty of space in this big school-room with

the desks and tables all back against the walls for the evening’s occupations. "It’s the biggest and brightest and best room in the hostel," Mr. Knight said. "It needs to be. Imagine the fun, keeping 20 creatures at different stages in order. No question of class teaching here-it’s individual work the whole

me."

J.