EDUCATION OF GIRLS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29383, 9 December 1960, Page 19

EDUCATION OF GIRLS

Two Reasons For ’ More Schooling

Girls should stay at school longer, both in order to be good mothers of families and to have something to do when the families were grown-up, the secretary to the Education Commission (Dr. K. J. Sheen) said at the Christchurch Girls’ High School prizegiving last night.

“More and more married women are going back to work after their children leave home, and this is happening not only in New Zealand but in every advanced country in the world,” Dr. Sheen said. “A good number of men don’t seem to like it—they apparently think the stronger sex is taking l over. But it is a trend which will be even more marked by the time you girls reach that stag?.” In New Zealand, the numbers of boys and girls going through to the fifth-form stage were not far from equal, he added. But in sixth forms there were 62 per cent, boys, while in the upper sixth, boys outnumbered girls by more than two to one. “Yet we need well-trained and well-educated people—not only men but women as well—more than ever before,” said Dr. Sheen. “Some folk tell you to aim at being as good as your mothers. I say you must aim at being a good deal' better and shrewder arid better-educated than your mothers.”