Kindergarten link with Teachers’ College urged

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33407, 13 December 1973, Page 6

Kindergarten link with Teachers’ College urged

The hope that the Government would soon decide to link Kindergarten training colleges with teachers’ colleges was expressed by Dr .1. IF. Mann, principal of the primary division of the Christchurch Teachers’ College, on Tuesday evening. Dr Mann was speaking at the Christchurch Free Kindergarten Association’s graduation ceremony. He presented diplomas to 38 graduates of the two-year | Kindergarten Training College course, which has now formed a close association with the Teachers’ College. Kindergarten College stu- ■ dents now shared lectures and lecturers with the primary division of the Teachers’ [College. Tribute should be paid to the Kindergarten [College and its staff for allowing this development without complaint, said Dr Mann. There was, he said, a great differential between allowances paid to the students, and between the staff : salaries of the two institutions. ! Dr Mann said he hoped the Government would recognise the great growth of the Kindergarten College, i and the quality of its programmes and its students. { “I hope this will be recognised in a tangible way with greater allowances for students, and staff salaries ’comparable with the TeachLers’ College.” he said. I ‘BEST COURSE POSSIBLE’ The Government should also recognise that entrance qualifications for the Kinder-

garten College had become,, in fact, comparable withi those for teachers’ colleges J in New Zealand.

Students graduating this year had received the best course yet possible, said the principal of the Christchurch Kindergarten Training College (Mrs W. L. Haggitt). Broader programmes with increasing liaison with the primary division of Teachers’ College had enlarged the scope of the students. Students had had their views challenged during the combined education courses with third-year primary teacher students. From this exchange with colleagues more sophisticated in debate they had emerged more selfIconfident and assurred, she said.

Children today often lacked positive leads on which they could model their behaviour, said Mr B. G. Nelson, of the Psychology Service, in his address to the graduates. “If children could express this they would say that 90 per cent of the time we tell I them what not to do, but ,i when were we going to tell them what we did want ithem to do,” he said. ■ He was very aware of 1 this, he said, in his own prac-

tice as a parent. He also be-i lieved children today were more likely to model themselves on a television character rather than on their fathers because they saw more of these fictitious characters than of their fathers. As teachers, he told the graduates, they could be quite sure that it would not be hard to get the affection of the children for whom[ they were responsible. But this was not enough: the[ model they presented to the[ child—the kind of person they were—was the most important factor in education.

Mr Nelson advised the graduates to preserve the ability to be child-like, a positive attribute as distinct from the negative qualities of being childish. A child had qualities of creativity, spontaneity, and a joy of living in the present that! was often overlaid by a sense of adult dignity in later years. “Take a delight in living, in being curious about the world around you, be spon-i taneous and creative,” he I said. “Occasionally take off! the adult blinkers we inflict! ourselves with, and which! create barriers between us' and the children we teach.”