School-Journal Story On Boys’ Gang Defended

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29016, 3 October 1959, Page 16

School-Journal Story On Boys’ Gang Defended

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, Oct. 2. The Education Department had received no complaints from headmasters and teachers or from parents about the tenor of a story in the recent issue of the School Journal, said Mr J. L. Ewing, Chief Inspector of Primary Schools, in Wellington. As senior officer controlling the School Journal, Mr Ewing was answering the complaint of an Auckland headmaster, who said in a letter to the press that the spring number of the journal contained a story about a gang of noys aged 11 or 12. In the story one boy, who would not join the gang, had his life made such a misery that he had to leave the district. The gang was planning an attack on another gang, and its meeting finally broke up at 2 a.m.

“The author does not express any disapproval of this type of behaviour,” wrote the headmaster. “How can schoolteachers discourage the formation of such gangs when the School Journal treats them as normal?”

Mr Ewing said it was difficult to understand why the story should cause concern. It described in a natural way the doings of a group of New Zealand boys. “If anything, the story is ip the tradition of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer,” said Mr Ewing "It is something 10 or 12-year-olds would enjoy as a piece of voracious reading.” Mr Ewing said that adults mentioned in the story acted in a natural way and were not caricatured as in some children's

stories. He could not see how the fictional story could have any harmful effect on children. There was no suggestion that the author approved of the gang’s activities. It was just an account of what a boy’s gang might do. Mr Ewing added that the School Journal went to every Form I and II in the country The Auckland headmaster’s complaint about the story was the only one received.