Questionnaire For School Children

Southland Times, Issue 23000, 21 September 1936, Page 6

Questionnaire For School Children

In the correspondence columns of The Southland Times on Saturday there appeared a letter from a parent expressing resentment at his children being questioned in school about the amount of work they did at home. Actually the information is being sought by the New Zealand Educational Institute in a purely impersonal way. It represents an attempt by the institute to improve the health and physique of school children, and is not in any way inspired by the Government. Medical authorities are agreed that overwork on the farm or in the home during school life, late hours and too little sleep, and excessive home lessons are common causes of chronic fatigue and retarded growth among children. It is true that plenty of physical activity distributed throughout the daily life of the child is helpful to the growing body, provided it is followed by a long, unbroken period of sleep at night. Nor is there any reason why children should not give their parents some help in the home or on the farm. But care must be taken that the work before and after school is not too great a tax on a child’s strength. The physique of many children m both the primary and secondary schools of New Zealand is far from satisfactory; and it is possible that one of the chief causes of stunted growth and fatigue is the demand made on the strength of children in some homes. The New Zealand Educational Institute is to be commended for its effort to discover how much work in every home is done by school children; and it is in parents’ own interests to supply accurate information. It has been made quite clear by the secretary of the Southland Education Board that names are not in any way recorded; the institute is concerned only with statistical information. There is no suggestion that to teach children to be useful in the home or on the farm is unwise. In fact children’s characters will be improved if they are allotted tasks in the home and if they are not permitted to regard the hours which they do not spend at school as to be lived for pleasure. But the work they do at home should not be excessive. If it is they may be robbed of the great boon of good health.