NO SANCTIONS

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33002, 23 August 1972, Page 3

NO SANCTIONS

(From our education reporter)

WELLINGTON, August 22. A bid to gain the sanctions of the country’s 11,000 secondary schoolteachers against the proposed 1973 Springbok tour failed at the annual conference of the Post-Pirmary Teachers’ Association today. The association however, accepted as a new policy move opposition to all forms of racial discrimination in education “except where there is a need for extra resources to provide equality of opportunity for deprived individuals or groups.” The proposal to call for the association’s opposition to the proposed Springbok tour originated in the Auckland region of the association, where it was suggested teachers were more aware of their responsibility in a society which already had its share of racial tensions.

Fears that a discussion on the sanction proposal would split the association “right down the middle” led to a decision by a vote of 60 to 40 that it not be discussed. It was the right of every individual to make up his own mind on the tour issue and most of the delegates considered that it was outside the official policy of the association to interfere with this individual right. The incoming president, Miss H. Ryburn, principal of Westlake Girls’ High School, Auckland, said racialism was an issue in New Zealand society, and that it was unwise of teachers to side-step the issues involved in apartheid in South Africa. “As teachers we should take a stand on the question of racially segregated societies. We should do this if we really believe in a multi-racial society here.”