Enrolments at High School

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27010, 9 April 1953, Page 8

Enrolments at High School

The large number of boys whose applications for enrolments at the Christchurch Boys’ High School next year have been unsuccessful will encourage the movement to establish as quickly as possible another boys’ high school in the city, instead of more schools on the Linwood and Cashmere co-educational model. Whether the rush for enrolment at the Boys’ High School is evidence of a strong demand by parents for another school limited to boys, or evidence that such a school would be desirable, is another matter. Many of the parents who put their boys’ names down for the Boys’ High School were probably actuated less by a preference for segregated schools than by respect for the standing and traditions of this particular school. Even if there had been an alternative they would still have preferred the older-estab-lished and better-known school. At the same time, there is still objection, perhaps no more than prejudice in some cases, among many parents to co-educational schools. Similar opinions also tend to be held by those teachers who were educated themselves in segregated schools and have done all their teaching in them. The results achieved in co-educational schools (even co-educational boarding schools) abroad and in New Zealand co-educational schools do not support the objections. Educationists regard co-education as one * of the helpful features of district high schools, for instance. Again New Zealand’s technical schools have always been co-educational in varying degrees, and there are successful coeducational secondary schools. To some extent the opposition to co-educational schools in New Zealand comes from tradition. Secondary schools have been naturally influenced considerably by English customs, which support segregation,

although there have been some notable exceptions in the United Kingdom. Also, the more rapid maturing of girls at this age and the difference in the interests of boys and girls have been used as arguments against departure from the old pattern. The American example has been mistrusted, partly because it is not English, partly because American education is often felt to be shallow, and partly because of a

general distrust of things American. But there is a good deal to be said for the American view as stated by Professor F. W. Hart, of the University of California, at the New Education Fellowship conference in New Zealand in 1937: “If a function of education is the social adjustment of the individual, then “there can be no defensible grounds “established for the segregation of “boys and girls of adolescent age. “Social adjustments in my opinion “cannot be achieved under condi- “ tions of segregation Incidentally, very much the same opinion was expressed collectively by New Zealand training college students in replies over a number of years to a questionary. In the face of growing opinion and its own excellent decision to make its first two schools co-educational, the Christchurch Post-Primary Schools’ Board may have acted a little too quickly in already asking that the third new school, at Shirley, should be a boys’ school. That would certainly provide a balance of two boys’ schools against the two existing girls’ schools. It would probably make little difference to the demand for enrolment at the Christchurch Boys’ High School and thus permit a quick reduction to its optimum roll of 750. It may be accepted that for years to come there will be more boys offering than this school can take, and room for some of them will have to be found elsewhere. As for the preference of parents for segregated schools, this may lessen as the results achieved by the Christchurch West and Papanui schools become better known and after the Linwood school, which will start with advantages not enjoyed by its predecessors, has made its impact on education. The Shirley school is still some years away, so a decision on its nature is not yet urgent. With educational opinion veering towards coeducation it would be a pity if segregation for Shirley became too firmly accepted too soon.