Children “Out On Limb”

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32031, 4 July 1969, Page 2

Children “Out On Limb”

Until New Zealand finds a solution to the problem of jointly educating parents and pupils many young people will continue to finish their school days restless and uncommitteed—at best vaguely resentful of the community and at worst vindictively anti-social. Miss Maureen King, vocational course mistress at Tamaki College, Auckland, expresses this opinion in an article, “Out On A Limb,” in the New Zealand Family Planning Association’s magazine, “Choice." The relationship between parent, pupil, and teacher will be the major educational

problem of the 19705, says Miss King, who was appointed by the psychological service of the Department of Education in Auckland to pioneer a vocational course scheme in New Zealand.

Miss King believes “the obtuseness and inflexibility of the secondary school curricula points to the reason why secondary education is still in general defeated by the challenge of the below-aver-age, non-academic adolescents.” It is plain, she says, that if 'one does not actually hold them down by force or by the leaving age the only way of arousing their co-opera-tion and that of their parents, and of arousing their trust and providing them with a formative education,

s is to enlarge the vocational .- course. The Tamaki College course f is a three-year course. Miss > King has yourig women bei tween the ages of 14 and 19. Their I.Q. range is between

69 to 85 and their reading ages range from eight years to 15 years. They undergo a oourse which has been devised to serve both their own and their parents’ problems. “Education for all puts these adolescents out on a limb. Education for each brings them back into a full and new horizon,” she says. In her article Miss King asks: “Who needs educating today? Surely the parent and the pupil by the teacher. I often remind myself that my young women have learned by imitating, and they have been more affected by what their parents do than what they say. “All children are mimics and the behaviour patterns shown by parents cannot fail to have a strong Influence.” “The growing incidence of divorce and separation of

parents is apparently causing great difficulties for young people today. Unless love from the mother and father is provided while these girls are in their formative years I find my task is so difficult.” Miss King believes New Zealand needs a replanned secondary education that takes full account of the developmental needs and challenges of adolescents. She considers the work she does at Tamaki College is “a mere dribble in a vast ocean of problems.” "The girl in the vocational course is not a mere statistic, but an individual out on a limb and requiring her own ‘education for each.’ I do not believe that these young women are bad or vicious, or dangerous, or sexy, or naughty, or can’t get along with their parents because they want to be that way. “They are caught up in a web of circumstances beyond their control. Many have shown they can be helped. They have the power to accept help."