AMERICAN SCHOOLGIRLS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22631, 24 July 1935, Page 10

AMERICAN SCHOOLGIRLS

FREE USE OF COSMETICS COMPARISON WITH DOMINION VISITING TEACHERS’ COMMENTS (Special to Daily Times) WELLINGTON, July 23. Some engaging observations on tiie school pupils of Wellington and a frank comparison with the scholars of the United States were made by two American- school teachers who, after a characteristic hustle round the schools of the Capital City to-day, went on by the Makura to Sydney in the course of a holiday trip. They .were Miss M. N. O’Connor, of Newark, New Jersey, and Miss E. M. Waterman, of South Pasadena, California. Both are high school teachers. They helped teach other out in an interview with a representative of the Dominion. Neither would presume, as each put it, to compare the educational system of this country with their own on so fleeting a visit. They went straight to the human factor.

“ I was deeply impressed with the ruggedness and glowing health of your schoolgirls,” declared Miss O’Connor. “ The complexions of your girls are just wonderful. Age for age for our high school girls, yours are very much better developed mentally. They seem alert and bright.. f As for the boys, she continued, they gave the impression of being lean and wiry and perhaps smaller in stature than the average American of similar age. This might be due. however, to the very strenuous sport in which she understood all New Zealand boys took part as soon as they had learned to run. If Wellington’s school children were typical of the rest of the Dominion then she would ■say that our young people took life more seriously than high school scholars of the United States.

“ That is probably true of the Eastern States,” Interposed Miss Waterman, “but I think that the children of California do take their studies seriously, especially since the depression. “Yes, I think ours, too, are getting back to the idea of working in recent years,” agreed her friend in modification.

_ Returning to complexions, Miss O’Connor was emphatic that our schoolgirls were better looking than their American cousins. She denied that she was being diplomatics “ Your girls have Nature’s beauty; ours are all made up with cosmetics. Yours don’t seem to use them while at school. .Our girls look theatrical; they are all done up with red lipstick and rouge. The only way to tell if an American schoolgirl really has 'a complexion is to see Per after her morning bath. /

“That is not altogether true of Cali fornia,” Miss Waterman protested.

Miss O’Connor went into details. “American girls from 12 years upward tweeze their eyebrows, pencil their faces so as to alter their expressions, and tint their fingernails. They copy the film stars, whose every foible they like to adopt.” Miss Waterman admitted that the proximity of her high school to Hollywood did not 'diminish the difficulties of the dean to stamp out the cosmetic habit. Her strongest ally was the depression, which tended to reduce the expenditure- by girls on cosmetics. Before the slump it was hard to make an American scholar get down to serious study. They used to have their own automobiles standing in the college precincts, and spent a lot of money on dress. “And,” said this teacher, “ that brings me to the uniform which I saw at your colleges.' How nice your' boys and girls look in their uniforms. In most of our high schools young people wear ordinary dress, and the children of less well-to-do parents suffer by comparison with the richer ones. The depression has cured most of that. The depression has done good to the American school child.

“Don’t tell him that,” counselled her companion. “ They will give us the rest of the English debts to pay.”

Miss O’Connor teaches economics and sociology. Asked what the ordinary ■ citizen of the United States thought of New Zealand if he had ever heard of it. Miss O’Connor replied that more was known of the Dominion in the last year or two than we might suppose. The Communists were telling - the American public that New Zealand had a very good constitution and-was quite socialistic in its legislation. Miss O’Connor mentioned that she had been informed that there had been a time in New Zealand’s political history when its social legislation was a model for the world. “ But,” 'she added, “-since I have been hero I am told that lately it has not been so good. Is that so? ”

She was assured that it, was all a matter of opinion.