Women’s group describes ‘skills’ as middle-class

Press, 30 August 1986, Page 34

Women’s group describes ‘skills’ as middle-class

PA Wellington Survival skills the Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer, has suggested school pupils need to learn were “depressingly middle-class and chauvinist,” says the Women’s Action Group. Mr Palmer made a plea to the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association conference in Wellington on Tuesday, for the introduction of “civics” courses. He said people knew too little about their rights and how things worked. He said knowledge of how to cope with the ordinary difficulties of life could be described as survival skills.

“People need to know what their political rights

are, how to organise them, how to get them across and how actually to change the behaviour of decision-makers,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Women’s Action Group, Ms Di Cleary, said the group endorsed Mr Palmer’s suggestion but pupils needed to know about cleaning, cooking, childcare, contraception, unemployment, redundancy, and revolution well before they needed to know about mortgages, insurance and taxation. “Mr Palmer’s own Government still subscribes to the theory that schoolgirl pregnancy is a matter of divine intervention and will not introduce sex education into the core

curriculum. As a result far too many schoolgirls can’t even survive the education system,” she said.

“By the same token, the ability to manage mortgages, taxation and insurance is of little relevance to the unemployed. “What the public need to know is whether the Government will indeed support training in the political survival skills Mr Palmer advocates. “Does this mean it will support training and preparation for the revolution it will be necessary to have in order to overthrow the extremely inequitable social and economic system it is currently establishing with such vigour?” Ms Cleary said.