A “PREVENTORIUM.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3885, 28 August 1928, Page 15

A “PREVENTORIUM.”

RETARDATE PUPILS. RIOTION BY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. At last week’s meeting of the committee of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce, Mr James Taylor said that members would remember that at their annual meeting Dr Lawson suggested that the • Chamber of Commerce should set up a committee to consider the question, among pther things, of bridging the .gap between school and work. To his mind •it was something more than a mere coincidence that, following on Professor Osborne’s visit and his appeal to the business community to take an interest in the ideals of education in Canada; there should come this request of Dr Lawson’s and the recent lectures on social inadequacy with the startling figures that had been quoted as to the percentage of retardate pupils in the Otago schools—something over 28 per cent., or more than one in every four. He thought the system of marking must be wrong. He could not believe that the figures were right. The chamber had felt for some time that there was some overlapping between the high schools and the technical college, and considered that it might be advantageous if the former specialised on preparing students for the university, and the latter on technical subjects principally. Then there was the question of vocational train ing and grading to which he referred at their annual meeting. It might be that the chamber was wrong, but as all ex?ense for Government departments, educa ion included (except, perhaps, where there were revenues from endowments) was a burden on industry, it was surely not out of place for them, as. represent ing those who supplied the funds to see that the money was being wisely expended, or should he say, wisely invested. He would propose that a committee be set up (not a standing committee, but a special committee) composed by Messrs E. F Duthie, J. M. Gallaway, and L. D. Ritchie—all mem bers of the chamber, who were respectively on the Technical College Board of Management, the High School Board of Governors, and the University Council—along with the president and himself, as representing the council, the mover to act, as convener. Those who had the privilege of hearing Professor Hunter in his interesting lecture on “The Psychological Clinic for Children, and Some of its Uses” would realise what a trifle sometimes determined whether a child, who, from some physical or other defect, was ’’ not understood ” at school, should degenerate into a criminal or rise into his proper place in the world, and would, he felt sure, agree with him that a chair of experimental psychology, accompanied with a psychological clinic, was wanted in our four university towns. This clinic would be in the nature of what Herbert Casson, editor of Efficiency, calls a “ Preventorium ” —that was, a new sort of hospital where diseases were prevented. The boys and girls who were to be in the industrial schools, children’s police courts and aslyum s in 20 years’ time were not yet born, and it was then duty to see to it that as far as they could these corrective institutions should be tenantless in the years to come. Mr J. Gray seconded the motion, which was carried.