SUMMER SCHOOL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 14

SUMMER SCHOOL.

STUDENTS ADDRESSED. ADOLESCENT PROBLEMS. When giving her first lecture in the series on understanding the adolescent to students At the Y.W.C.A. summer school for recreational leadership at the Auckland University College yesterday, Miss Agnes Kennedy said she considered that many tragic mistakes could be avoided if parents would make a proper study of the subject. Many people, she said, wet-e misled by catchwords gleaned by attending a few unrelated lectures, and this was a case where a little learning was a dangerous thing. "Love of children is not enough for one who is to be in charge of any stage of their upbringing," Miss Kennedy said. "One must also bave understanding, and this also is useless without knowledge. It is true that knowledge inay be gained by practical experience, but many young lives' may be injured while the teacher is in the process of gaining this knowledge. "The parent or youth leader must beware of exaggerating the problems of adolescence," she continued. "In seeking to help she must discover a middle way between over-guidance prompted by over-anxiety or officiousness, and the tendency to shirk responsibility, in the name of modern freedom, and to take the line of least resistance and noninterference." Miss Kennedy warned the students against making hard and fast age limits for certain periods of growth and development. She said that, although adolescence was usually considered as being a period of storm and stress, some children avoided showing any unusual strain during this period. The students must guard against judging the difficulties of the young people by a retrospective view of their own experiences, as memory was almost always faulty, and an experience felt strongly by one person might never be realised by another. On Thursday evening the students attended the meeting in the City Council chambers, where members of the permanent Auckland city committee set up under the Physical Welfare and Recreation Act were announced and plans for the national campaign for physical fitness discussed.