PARENTS AND EDUCATION.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20730, 15 December 1932, Page 12

PARENTS AND EDUCATION.

WORK TO BE DONE FOR CHILDREN. LEARNING BEYOND SCHOOL j WALLS. j The part that parents should play in j tlie education of their children was emphasised by Dr. D. E. Hansen, Principal | of the Technical College, in his annual j report, presented at the annual prize- 1 giving of the College last evening. It j was too often forgotten, Dr. Hansen I maintained, that a very small part of a child's time was spent at school, and that every influence it came in contact with played its part in general education. Beeauso of this the whole responsibility could not; rest on the teachers. "Too many parents aro prepared to leave the actual education of the children to the teachers," he said. "The teacher is given a difficult task, for the responsibility that ho is expected to assume is heavy, and he has to carry it 1 even though the pupil is under his control for only five hours a day. For children are influenced for good or ill by everything tlicy sec or in their 16 waking hours, whether it is through indiscriminate attendance at the moving pictures, their reading in the advertisements as well as in the letterpress of the newspapers, in the large amount of light literature that is sold cheaply in some shops, and their gazing at the articles sold in shops. "All of those influences constitute education, and it needs the combined efforts of parents and teachers to ensure that the wrong ones arc counteracted and that active education on the right lines is proceeding all the time. I am not suggesting that parents should relieve teachers of any of the teaching j work, but rather that in many cases they should give their children a bettor foundation of general knowledge and inculcate better powers of observation of all that is going on around them. The Opportunities Available. i "Our daily newspaper provides j dozens of items of interest from all i parts of the world that open the way to i interesting conversation at the break- j fast tabic or the dinner table. For boys ! aro not all interested in sport only, or I girls only in other specialised sections of the newspaper, and an appetite .for j information on many matters can easily J be cultivated that will lead to bet ter j school work and a better preparation j for life's work later on. > "I would suggest, that every home' should have a good atlas, a good dictionary, and an encyclopccdia of some kind. Fortified with these, the parent and tho child together will discuss many matters intelligently and with deep interest to them both. If the habit of doing this lias to be developed it may bo a little hard for a start on the parent, but it will bring its own reward. Value of the Scriptures. ''Further, speaking as a New Zoulander myaelf; I regret deeply the ignorauco of the Bible and its teachings that is found among many of our children," said Dr. Hansen in conclusion. "I hope that parents themselves will tako this matter in hand if necessary, and enter into discussion of Scripture with their children as freely as they would any other matter of prime importance to the character and naturo of every child." Mr J. 11. Howell, first Principal of the College, touched on the same point in his address. A school was essentially a co-operative institution, ho said, and teachers, pupils, and parents need to work together. The parents needed to do this in the interests of the boys and girls. They should see that the children had behind them traditions that enabled them to comply with what the teachers required of them. Children to-day wero living in a noisy ago, and they required quiet and adequate rest. They needed to dovelop an enjoyment of simple pleasures, especially of those they could enjoy in tho home. Again it was advisable to keep children at school until they were 10 years of age at least, unless it was absolutely impossible to do so. In the adolescent years it was of value to young people to be under the discipline they obtained at tho school. So it was that, taken all round, there was no better investment for young people than education.