School Life Altered By Hair-do's And Hair Dyes

Press, Volume CI, Issue 30004, 13 December 1962, Page 2

School Life Altered By Hair-do's And Hair Dyes

(From Out Own Reporter)

TIMARU. Dec. 12. The regimentation that operated in boarding schools in the past, with its stress on discipline and formal good manners, had, in the last decade, surrendered to many influences that had completely altered the whole pattern of youthful conformity, said toe Principal of the Timairu Girls’ High School (Miss N. M. Dickie) at toe eighty-second annual prizegiving ceremony today. Not toe least of these was the impact of a mass culture created and maintained by commercial inducements directed, in part, at a teenage market —and that in a society where money was easily obtained and readily spent. Miss Dickie added. “It is not surprising that in large concentrations of young people all their enthusiasm, their energy and their emotions seem to be harnessed now tn a new range of hair-do’s and hair dyes; in an application of cosmetics from powder to pencil, and again in fashions in food, from “pinkies” at midday to poultry at midnight.

"From such a charge one retreats, acknowledging the variance of the victors, and toe virtues of diluting their forces in the future in the interests of the survival of comfort and convenience—a dilution that lies within our power," said Miss Dickie. To continue the office of principal and hostel manager w« now regarded in official quarters not only as beyond the executive capacity of any one person, but also as a

potential threat to the effective performance of the function for which a principal was appointed—the development of the school. Miss Dickie continued. For more than 40 years there had been a boarding school in toe best tradition, said Miss Dickie, and she expressed toe hope that the actual residence of the principal would be continued to assure toe integration of toe two establishments. From her own experience, a boarding house hardly qualified as a boarding school, she said. Another important factor was that a working knowledge of. and practice in residential life in conjunction with the profession of teaching was now so rare as to reduce to a bare minimum toe number of those with toe confidence of experience to face the boarding situation on a massive scale, said Miss Dickie.