"YOUR CHILD AT SCHOOL"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 872, 20 April 1956, Page 5

"YOUR CHILD AT SCHOOL"

Sir,-The term "Education" covers a wide field, but the question is not so much what it is as how much of it we are going to squeeze into the already overloaded school course. Parents are entitled to expect that their children’s time in the classroom, even in the Infant room, is spent learning the practical skills, appreciation of culture, and being stimulated to think and express their thoughts orally and in writing. Reasonable rest periods, of course, are most necessary, Is not the out of school part of a child’s life the correct time for free development and for "doing that which comes naturally," as Frank Dean puts it? The plain truth is that no teacher can develop the "whole child," or rather 40-odd "whole children," in five hours a day for five days a week-much as the theorists and psychologists would have it, Perhaps the parents, too, have some duties to their children! The path of New Zealand education is littered with exotic sheaves; wrenched from varied stacks to be pitch-forked on to its topsoil, shaken a few times and left to rot. True, occasionally a single seed takes root and flourishes, but at what a cost! Had we but carefully examined the soil, climate and market conditions of the two countries concerned, we might have been the wiser and our loss much less, And if we must import, why not try Scotland as a source of supply? Scottish seed is "Certified Educational,’ pithy and well polished, and most suitable for our conditions.

J. C.

MARTYN

(Oamaru).