“Must Have Childhood”

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30442, 16 May 1964, Page 1

“Must Have Childhood”

z (N.Z. Press Association) DUNEDIN, May 15. In striving to meet the demands of this highly competitive, scientific and technological age children must not be robbed of their childhood, Mr A. E. Campbell, Director of Education, said today when he opened the annual conference of the New Zealand Play Centre Federation at Dunedin.

“With so much more to be learned there will be pressures to begin teaching things prematurely,” Mr Campbell said. “Yet we all know that It is wasteful of children’s time to teach them some things before they have reached a certain level of maturity. This can produce maladjustments which persist through their growing years and even into adulthood.” It was also known that the child who missed the experiences appropriate to his stage, particularly the experience of plenty of good play, was impoverished as a person throughout his days, Mr Campbell said. “Through good play children learn gradually to understand and appreciate and manage themselves and their world and to achieve the stability of purpose and character that is the basis of achievement.” Remarkable Growth The growth of pre-school education was described by Mr Campbell as one of fhe most remarkable educational developments of the last 25 years. In 1938, about half a cen-

tury after the establishment of the first free kindergarten, but before the play centre movement, the organised preschool service catered for 1756 children.

Today the play centres and kindergartens catered for 24,000 children, that is about 20 per cent of all three and four-year-olds. “I do not know of any other country in the world in which the proportion is higher,” Mr Campbell said.

“To the extent that we forget this —that we do not allow children to be children—we shall not only fail to produce balanced and creative people, we shall also, I believe, hinder, rather than help the very necessary effort to produce a generation that is more knowledgeable and more technically competent than our own.”