THE BACKWARD CHILD

Evening Star, Issue 23880, 9 May 1941, Page 3

THE BACKWARD CHILD

MORE CONSIDERATION URGED EFFECTS OF FAULTY HOKE LIFE ADDRESS TO EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE ‘Delinquency and Retardation’ was the subject of Mr L. H. Bradstock s presidential address at the annual meeting of the Otago Division of the New Zealand Educational Institute, which commenced this morning. It might be asked at the outset what the subject of his remarks had to do with the teacher, said Mr Bradstock, but he would endeavour to show that the home and the school played a very important part in checking retardation in education and in assisting those children who showed tendencies towards delinquency. He might go further and say it was their main work. As primary teachers, they were, in conjunction with the home, responsible for the making or marring of the rising generation. The work of officials of the Child Welfare Department was largely to look after those who had already fallen—it was their work _as teachers to prevent the child coming into the hands of the Welfare Department. Juvenile crime had increased at an alarming rate during the past few years. Why this was so could not he given a definite answer, but it deserved to be further studied. He ventured to suggest that the increased pace at which modern civilisation was changing made it more and more difficult for a child to find his place. The home had largely lost its power in the training of the child. _ and therefore a greater responsibility had fallen upon the teacher. The underlying cause of juvenile delinquency was undoubtedly the moral immaturity of children and the fact that they did not receive the training to enable them to withstand the ordinary temptations of the world—temptations which were increasing under the present mode of living. In that connection he felt that insufficient time in the past had been devoted to training for leisure. It was commonly stated that delinquency was due to some moral_ taint which had been inherited, but his experience in dealing with delinquents in one of' the New Zealand reformatories was definitely against that belief. A general characteristic such as intelligence might be inherited, but Certainly not morality or immorality. No child was ever born good, neither had any child been born bad He came into the world neither good nor bad, neither moral nor immoral. His morality had to be achieved, and. provided a child received a good home training in a suitable environment, and was taught in a right school atmosphere, he held that this moral training could be given. The first and main cause of child delinquency was lack of parental control. A much larger percentage of juvenile criminals came from the retarded class rather than from those of low intelligence. Faulty home life was a frequent cause of delinquency. It was not confined to the poor. One found it just as often in the homes of the rich, where there was an absence of companionship between parents and children. It would appear that the average parent to-day was shirking his responsibility and placing it upon the teacher. The latter certainly had his part to play, but without co-operation of the home, his work became very much more difficult. It seemed to have been forgotten that the first and greatest of educational institutions was the home. In summing up the home influences, Mr Bradstock suggested that the weaknesses in a large number of New Zealand homes were : (1) The allowing ot too much liberty; (2) the lack of companionship between parent and child; (3) the lack of home amusements; (4; the lack of interest in the child’s early education. The absence of companionship was a very serious factor, and it was in all classes of homes. They appeared these days to be far too busy at work and pleasure-seeking to attend to the chief responsibility—the child. He could quote many cases of children who found themselves in the hands of the Welfare Department through this absence of companionship and lack of attention. v, Rousseau said that cities are the graves of the human spirit. He would say this with even greater force if he were to see the multiplicity of flats in modern cities. Flats, with their cramped surroundings, were the graves of the spirit of childhood. There was no adequate room for play, with the result that children were surrounded by prohibitions, and with no outside or inside playing area they were forced to seek the companionship of other children on the street. A pupil must be considered retarded when his lack of conformity to the average in a particular standard demanded special administrative action, owing to the slowness of bis rate of progress, or perhaps they might consider the backward child to be one who in the middle of his school career was unable to do the work of the class next below which was normal for his age. It could be shown also that the retarded child bad a bad influence on the normal if taught with him. The backward, and normal should not be taught together, because in actual practice this method did not improve the older child, but emphasised still more his inferiority to and difference from other children.

The remedy for retardation was undoubtedly a closer co-operation of home and school, and the institution of more special classes where the child would have the chance of receiving individual instruction, and where he would be given the opportunity of progressing more or less at his own rate, and where he would maintain his self-respect, by tasting the joy of achievement. These special classes, however, should not bo separate schools, but should be attached to a primary or intermediate school where the children would associate with normal classes and children, and the opportunity would bo at hand for constant transference and promotion. Mr Bradstock said he was making a special plea for the backward child. He would ask that more interest be taken in his educational welfare, better conditions of teaching be provided, and more sympathetic treatment be received from all interested in education. The child with the one talent was God’s creation, and it was bis right that this one talent should be developed to the fulh The work with backward children was not dull. and. although it would not bring quick results, there would be satisfaction and reward in watching the steady growth of confidence and in-

dependence which would come through profitable activity. To save boys and girls from -despondency, even delinquency, was no mean achievement. In conclusion, might he call attention to the sixth verse of chapter xviii. of St. Matthew’s Gospel : “ Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for for him that a millstone be hanged about his neck and that he he drowned in the depths of the sea.” Were they offending by not providing adequate and suitable instruction for the backward child?