SCHOOL ENTRANCE AGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21882, 18 August 1934, Page 15

SCHOOL ENTRANCE AGE

Sir, —Is money so plentiful or is taxation so light at the present time that we should be casting around for some means of increasing it, even by methods the reverse of beneficial such as a return to the five-year-old school entrance age? As it is now, our children get through their education course so quickly it is over long before they are able to go to work and from about 15 to 17 are at a loose end, to their own detriment and the worry of their parents. If people were alive to their own interests and the welfare of the children they would raise the school age to seven not lower it to five years, thereby saving another half million per annum in taxation or applying that half million toward providing good food and healthful surroundings—sunshine camps to wit —for the children instead of taxing their undeveloped brains with stuff they cannot assimilate, giving them that grave bevond-their-vears look so common nowadays. One of your correspondents complains of "smokescreens" yet puts up one, though not a very dense one, himself when he asserts that the raising of the school age to seven would temporarily deprive children of the benefits of the dental clinics, as if dental clinics could not otherwise function and at a hundredth part of the cost. J. R. Boswell.