Professional’s role in early education

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33932, 27 August 1975, Page 6

Professional’s role in early education

What is the role of! the professional in early) childhood education? the Director-General of Education (Mr W. L. Ren- l wick) asked at the national convention on Early Childhood Care and Development in Christchurch yesterday. ’ Mr Renwick warned that 1 the professionals’ participation might carry a potential 1 threat to volunteers and lay . administrators who might J feel their own roles to be threatened. New Zealand’s educational services, he said, were provided and developed in a partnership between volun- 1 tary organisations and the . state.

“This has long been the basis of Government policy, and I for one strongly applaud it,” he said.

Even at the best of times, however, this system had its inherent difficulties. Suspicion of officials and officialdom was one of the facts of social life in New Zealand. "Voluntary associations are often inclined to look upon bureaucrats as powerhungry, no-saying, wicked fairies,” he said. Officials also had their apprehensions. “Inured as they are in the rules for the proper control of Government expenditure, they are capable of being amazed at the blithe assumption that voluntary organisations sometimes make about the uses to which the tax-payers' money might be put,” he

' -“And they can get tired of being approached as if their I Minister is Father Christmas with no end to the number of goodies in his well-filled bag.” The working relationship was always capable, Mr Renwick said, of ranging all the way,, from mutual incomprehension and distrust, to cb'rfipleire agreement Tmd understanding. Relations between himself and his colleagues, and those involved in voluntary child-; hood education programmes, were more positive than; negative. But changes were; raising issues about the dis-; tribution of initiative, power and decision within the partnership.