Teacher Blames Fathers For Lack Of Interest

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31231, 1 December 1966, Page 12

Teacher Blames Fathers For Lack Of Interest

‘•The Press” Special Senice HAMILTON. Nov. 30. “Too few fathers take a deep interest in the education of their children,” said the head of the English department at the Hamilton Technical Collegt (Mr K. A. Pound), at a lunch-time meeting of the Hamilton Rotary Club this week. Mothers often took a great interest, but children needed the help of their father. “When you talk to a father down the street he often does not know what forms his children are in,” he said. “It is the mother who tells you. At parent-teacher meetings it is the women who ask the questions.” Mr Pound said the preschool influence of parents on education in reading was important. “Good readers come from homes wherj reading is encouraged at an early age by parents. The reading habits and the quality of reading done by parents also influences the child.” Many hearing tests given to primary schoolchildren were

"appallingly careless," he said. Children all too frequently got through to secondary school with hearing problems that affected their reading “Children hate to be different and they do their best to defeat hearing tests, said Mr Pound. , The approach of teaching of reading was better than ever but the hindrances were many. No one cause of difli cutties in reading stood out above the rest