MALADJUSTMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 145, 16 December 1942, Page 3

MALADJUSTMENT

CAUSE OF DELINQUENCY

The principal of Rongotai College, Mr. F Martyn Renner, speaking at the breaking-up ceremony last night, expressed the opinion that 20 per cent, of the pupils at secondary schools were maladjusted. Juvenile as well as adult delinquency could often be traced back to maladjustment during the school period, Mr. Renner said. If a child weak in arithmetic were kept back in class after class because of that weakness, who could wonder that lack of confidence and inferiority complexes were the result, with very often the final stage of social antagonism. This position had been dealt with in the inter mediate department at Rongotai in an adjustment class, where boys had been brought up to attainment ages in excess of their chronological ages. Mr. Renner said. If a child weak in time spent in teaching he was convinced of two things: That the prerequisite for all specialised knowledge was a broad, well-balanced general education, and that no boy should be allowed to leave school until, within the measure of his capabilities, he had acquired the faculty of three dimensional thinking, deep, straight, and clearly.

Characterising the University proposals to have an examination at the end of the third year and to accredit the pupil the following year for matriculation as a timid gesture to conciliate opponents of the examination system, of which he was one if any examination put a premium on cram and took no account of conscientious application over a period of years, Mr. Renner said that if the proposals were accepted by secondary schools they might have pupils in their fourth year in the fifth form, thus encouraging immaturity of thought and haziness of outlook.

The head of the college was D. X MacLeod.