FIVE-YEAR-OLD PUPILS

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1935, Page 4

FIVE-YEAR-OLD PUPILS

KINDERGARTEN POSITION GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY QUESTION. INFORMAL TEACHING WANTED. INSTITUTE PRESIDENT’S VIEWS. The position of kindergarten schools in connection with the agitation for the re-admission of five-year-old children to primary schools is in no way likely to be adversely affected if the agitation were successful. This statement was made to a News representative at New Plymouth yesterday by Mr. G. F. Invercargill, president of the New Zealand Educational Institute, who is in Taranaki on his way to Auckland. Although the position in Taranaki was somewhat different to that in the cities, where various women’s organisations maintained kindergarten schools as a contribution to social welfare, said Mr. Griffiths, , the place of the kindergarten was definitely recognised as a rightful one. Kindergarten schools, fulfilling a definite want, were entitled to Government subsidy, but it was felt that if the,education of five-year-old children was to be subsidised, as was only right, there was no reason why the teaching of children of that age should not be done in the primary schools, which had the advantage of specially, trained teachers and all the necessary equipment. The kindergartens established everywhere were not intended for five-year-old children, but had been forced to take them when they were excluded from the primary schools. PHILOSOPHY IDENTICAL. “There are many people who seem . to think that the education a young child receives in a kindergarten is different from that he receives in a good infant school,” said Mr. Griffiths. “Hence we find some people justifying the exclusion of the five-year-olds and at the same time advocating the extension of kindergarten classes. The underlying philosophy and general mode of procedure in a good infant school was identical with that in a good kindergarten. In both institutions the emphasis was upon education through the child’s own spontaneous activities, upon ’play-ways’ of learning, upon free and happy co-operation between child and child." Children approaching the age of six were ready for more formal work than would be suitable for four-year-olds,, but the good infant teacher had a large place for activities such as handwork and drawing, music and dancing, poetry and story-telling. Premature instruction was both wasteful and harmful, and the institute had on more than one occasion taken the lead Jn the movement towards a more modem conception of. infant education.

It coula be admitted frankly that owing to a number of factors there was once a large gap between infant school education and the less formal atmosphere of the kindergarten. In the years immediately preceding the exclusion of the five-year-olds, however, much had been done to close that gap. If education in some infant rooms was still too formal in outlook and procedure the obvious remedy was to improve the schools, not to exclude the children, “There is therefore no. incompatability between asking for the re-admission of the five-year-olds and urging the extension of kindergarten classes,” concluded Mr. Griffiths. “Both groups of advocates are agreed that schools should be provided, for young children, and both are agreed that education during these years should be .based on the child’s own interests and activities and free from any trace of the dull and dispiriting grind of the old-fashioned infant school. “The re-admission of the five-year-olds is the obvious first step in the direction of adequate educational provision for young children. There is room for them in our schools, and the service contains scores of skilled teachers who have been specially trained in modern infant room methods."