SCHOOL TEACHING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 6, 7 July 1938, Page 10

SCHOOL TEACHING

GOOD ROAD PRACTICES

FIRST APPOINTMENT MADE

A PUBLIC CONSCIENCE

Some months ago the Road Safety Council proposed as one of the most promising means of bringing about greater road safety the appointment of full-time instructors for the schools, to bring into close association the work of the Transport and the Education Departments as regards road safety. The idea is far more than to teach children to walk over a roadway safely or to ride to school in safety; it has a long view purpose, of impressing upon children the principle that each individual has a vital part to take in road safety and that practices which endanger others are as serious and antisocial as theft and other1 offences which are not tolerated by public opinion, but which in fact are from a social point of view no more serious in their consequences. Another aspect is that punishment after the offence does not remedy the damage done, and that the deterrent effect of punishment cannot have the same social effect as a public conscience against the commission of offences, and though by a continuing campaign a public conscience can be built up among adults, a permanent recognition of the anti-social nature of carelessness and recklessness on the roads must be founded among the children themselves. The plan therefore does not begin and end with the lecturing of children on immediate safety measures, though this aspect has an important place, and will necessarily be first dealt with. ! THE FIRST APPOINTMENT. The Wellington Education Board gave its full support-to the proposal and the first appointment, of Mr. T. W. Stringer, a son of Sir Walter Stringer, as road traffic instructor ip. the Wellington education district, is announced. Mr. Stringer was educated at Christ's College and the Waitaki Boys' High School, and after his return from the war his varied experience included several years of farming, a period with the Crown estates administration in Samoa, and later he was associate to Mr. Justice Alpers and to his father when Judge of the Supreme Court. His work will mclude the discussion of methods with the teachers as well as the instruction of pupils, and he has already met headmasters of city schools in preliminary discussions. The general plan has been prepared to include the circulation, of.accident statistics and juvenile accident figures, the distrißution of small posters for school use, illustrated wall notices giving, in brief form, the main rules of conduct .for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists, and an illustrated manual or text-book is also to be prepared. A short road-safety film is being made at the Government film studio at Miramar, and further films will be made later and will be exhibited by the instructor at,the schools. HABIT-FORMING YEARS. There appears to be, everything to commend special attention to children in the early habit-forming years if the adults of the future are to be expected to conform to a proper standard 6f conduct on the road. The majority of accidents arise from road faults which everyone should recognise as serious faults, not as peccadilloes which everyone gets away with. • Those main faults are excessive speed, failure to keep to the left, failure to give, way to the right at intersections, failure to signal (particularly by cyclists), cutting in, and lack of appreciation of the rights of others. There has been, and still is, though to a less pronounced degree, a form of competition by the various users of the road to assert themselves at the expense of the other fellow. The whole issue is really a behaviour question. It is a hard job to teach new tricks to old dogs, whether by continued appeals or threats of penalty, and for this reason it is well worth the maximum efforts by teachers and parents, arid in fact by everyone in a position to help, to encourage the formation of better habits of road behaviour among children. At the same time, children need some protection—both- against their own ignorance and carelessness of some adults in charge of motor vehicles. In the last traffic year 1420 persons under 20 years of age figured in the accident toll. The instruction of children in road behaviour is therefore doubly important, for the immediate safety of young people, and for the ground work upon which will follow the behaviour of the adults of a few years' time.