THE WORLD FIVE-YEAROLDS Will TAKE OVER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29760, 1 March 1962, Page 10

THE WORLD FIVE-YEAR-OLDS Will TAKE OVER

Each year the first week of February sees an army of small children advance upon our schools and occupy the class-rooms but recently evacuated by the previous year's platoons of five-year-olds.

Their objective? Though as yet blissfully unaware of it, they have a long-term plan to take over the affairs of this country within a generation or two. How successful that take-over will be depends to a large extent upon what our schools will make of them.

What contribution to this end does the parent, and the community, expect from the infant school? The community, representing parents en masse, has of late been somewhat vociferous in its demands. It expects a high standard in reading, writing, spelling and numbers. This seems a most reasonable expectation and indeed infant teachers work earnestly toward that end. Unfortunately not all pupils are capable of attaining a high standard in these subjects, but this limitation is less apparent to the man in the street. Modest Parents

The parent as an individual is more modest in his demands. He is to be seen at parent-teacher meetings and other school ructions, perhaps throwing his weight behind a drive for school funds. These contacts with his child’s environment enable him to make a reasonable estimate of the school’s effort.

The anxious mother handing over her five-year-old—-eager, agressive, timorous, rebellious or lachrymose—to the infant mistress, is the most realistic. Her chief concern is that her child should “settle in happily.” If she has dutifully read what the child psychologists have to say about the child starting school, she may express the hope that he may make “a smooth adjustment to the school situation.” But “psychology-wise or otherwise,” most mothers seem to know instinctively that the “settling-in” period and process is of paramount importance. Here the mother and the teacher meet on common ground, each realising that the child who remains a misfit throughout his infant school years will almost certainly be a misfit in later life. Hard Task

The infant school has roughly two years in which to train its pupils to become responsible and agreeable members of the community in which their young lives are spent. It is a far from easy task. It requires of the teacher a never-ending watchfulness, a readiness to encourage the timid, to restrain the aggressive. It requires tact, to ensure that the not-so-privileged may, as well as being accepted, feel that they belong. It requires a ready sympathy to comfort the hurts, physical and emotional, of the child so recently removed from the security of home. And it needs some knowledge of psychology to see behind the barriers of the non-co-operative.

Nor is this watchfulness confined to the classroom. The child in the playground is frequently a very different person from the' one in the classroom. The teacher on duty is on hand not only to apply ointment and bandage when and where required but also to observe her pupils and so round off her knowledge of their full personality. Only with complete understanding

comes the ability to train the individual and to mould the future citizen.

An important factor in the adjustment of the new entrant is the classroom environment'. To walk into a room that is bright with flowers and pictures is not enough. The child taken to the seaside sees the beauty of sky and sea-scape only as a pleasant background to the sand into which he must plunge his hands and begin to make something. So it is when he enters the classroom. If he cannot get down to business and make something or do something, he will be bored and unhappy or noisy and mischievous. Therefore the classroom must be made ready to challenge the interest of the new entrant. For girls, the Wendy house with dolls to dress and undress, a bed to make and remake, a tea-set to have a party with, a tub to wash the doll’s clothes and a line and real pegs to hang them out with, offers an immediate attraction. Boys will gravitate toward a junk box and begin on wonderful construction work. A collection of minature animals, trees, buildings, people, cars and trucks will prove fascinating to boys and girls alike, as will cut-out books, a painting corner and a story-book corner. Out in the playground they will find a jungle gym, a slide, swings and see-saws. Business of Learning

All these help the child in the process of “settling-in.” This achieved, he is ready for the real business of school — learning to read. A large percentage reach this happy state almost as soon as they arrive at school. Some require a few weeks in which to adjust, while a small number continue to chum around like un absorbed ingredients in an otherwise smooth mixture. These are the problem pupils who will later become problem citizens, at whom the community will point and say only too readily: “The schools are not doing their job!” The infant teacher with some 30 or 40 pupils demanding attention has little enough time to diagnose the emotional troubles of her “problems.” It is here that cooperation between parent and teacher is of the greatest value. Brief conversations at the monthly Mothers’ Club or Parent-Teacher Association’s meetings, with other parents waiting to claim the teacher’s attention, will not be adequate to solve the problems of the mal-adjusted child. The pity of it is that the parents of these children are seldom seen at school and the teacher, perhaps young and without enough self-assurance to visit the home uninvited, struggles along with her problem when a knowledge of the home circumstances might show her how she could help her pupil. Home Problem

It must not be assumed that the mal-adjusted child is a problem only at school. The parents have much to contend with, too; and the unapproachable teacher who is loath to discuss her pupil with the parent, possibly because she anticipates “interference,” does nothing to help. If a child tries to climb the wall in her sleep and screams, “Mummy, Mummy, don’t send me to school,” the mother has every right to take her problem to the school, and should be met with a ready sympathy and a willingness to help. The problem child, once adjusted to the school environ-

ment does not necessarily remain so. The mental or emotional factors causing mal-adjustment may recur, either later in school life or in the difficult teenage years, but no teacher would be so unwise as to make a prediction. The boy she helped to

overcome his violent outbursts of temper, appears in the court news a dozen years later for hitting someone over the head with a bottle. The boy who was prevented by her constant vigilance from becoming the class bully succeeds in channelling his energies and becomes an All Black. But the boy who never gave her a moment’s worry is convicted, at the age of 18, of converting a car. Small Proportion Fortunately, the problem children represent only a small proportion of the school population, and it is reasonably safe to generalise and say that tomorrow’s adult community is being determined in today’s schools. Are the teachers bringing imagination as well as dedication to their task? The jet, atom and space ages are being compressed into a generation of time, and within a decade or two

the child may step almost from the cot to the spaceship. Today’s children will learn to accept a way of life that our minds can only boggle at, yet ours is the responsibility to prepare them for it The church, the home and the school must give in greater measure than ever before. The children who start school this year will need greater faith —in this the home and the church must nuture them.

They will need greater skills, not only in such things as mathematics, the sciences and languages, but also in the manual arts. For these the schools must train them.

They will need greater tolerance to live in a shrinking world of clashing nationalities.

Such is the world this year’s new entrants will eventually take over. We can but wish them well.