CHILD EDUCATION.

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18697, 25 July 1932, Page 5

CHILD EDUCATION.

A PROTEST ENTERED. EXCLUSION OF FIVE-YEAR-OLDS. FORMATIVE PERIOD. Opposition to the exclusion of the five-year-olds from the primary sehools was expressed by Mr G. b. Nicholls, of the Wellington Education Board, and Mr L. J. MoDonald, of the Wellington- School Committees’ Association and Educational Federation, at a meeting at Johnsonville. The meeting subsequently pledged Itself to assist In the effort to have the school age again reduced to five years. No nation, Mr McDonald said, could advance to greatness without mind culture, a high standard of intelligence and competency, the products of education. Mind development was based upon experience, each experience creating its own Imprints on the mind from which the responses sprang. These governed the preferences, desires, and balanced the impulses. The lasting imprints of experiences were first moulded into the mind during Its most plastlo stage between the three to six-year period in the average child. Subsequent Imprints of experience, which gradually built the character of the child and the adult, were for the most part reproductions of the first ones recorded In the mind during the most receptive period of the child's life, from three to six years. The importance coujd not be over-empha-sised, therefore, continued the speaker, that the first experiences should be of the most desirable type, which were selected and designed for the child by experts in the school atmosphere, and not those encountered by accident in the uncontrolled activity of the child —in the back-yard j or the street.

Benefits Emphasised

The child who did not attend school until it was six years of age or later missed the benefit of the carefully selected experiences of thought and action gained from directed cooperative activity during the very period the foundation of Its mind and character was being moulded, said Mr McDonald. It also missed the benefit of the broader development of the mind.that accrued from the acquaintance with the wider experience, additional to Its own, of the characters In the children’s literature selecte 1 and Introduced to it at school. The obvious conclusion was. said Mr McDonald, that the highest interest and destiny of the children and tho nation was being jeopardised to effect a saving of £II,OOO. Was it worth while to sacrifice the competency of the future generation, the priceless asset of responsible, intelligent citizenship for that price—or a hundredfold that price? The question was so closely related to the welfare of the nation as to be a matter for grave concern to the right-thinking man or woman who loved the children and who revered New Zealand. The speaker appealed to his hearers to do everything within their power to prevent the injury from becoming permanent. Transfer of Teachers. Th'e effect on the Infant was really not all, because the change, continued Mr McDonald, would seriously disturb the whole education system. The lowering of grade of schools on account of the reduced attendance woud make it necessary to transfer many teachers, because they would become what was known as “overscale." The changes of teachers that would ensue would have a seriously retarding effect on the children in all classes, and altogether there were all the possibilities of disintegration of our State school system of which we have been justly proud in the past. Sir Truby King’s statements had been used to support the advancing of the age of school entry, but Sir Truby had recently donated £5 to the Kindergarten Association and accompanied this with remarks of appreciation of the value of the kindergarten work. He believed that the doctor had said that every child should attend the kindergarten school from four years, to eight. The speaker quite agreed with him, and urged that the remedy was to create a kindergarten department as an integral part of the education system. This would be of great benefit to the nation, for very little expense, comparatively, that could be conferred upon it at the present time. It would double the return yielded by our education system and present the disaster and permanent injury of driving our young children into private and denominational schools, the influence of which would be to create that class distinction in community relationships of which this country had been so fortunately free in the past.