‘Please Miss, Here's Sonny’

Te Ao Hou, December 1962, Page 55

‘Please Miss, Here's Sonny’ Let's think about this five-year-old for a moment, the one you took to school the other day, or sent along with his elder sister (she knocked on the Infant Mistress's door, said ‘Please Miss, this is my little brother Sonny—where's your hanky Sonny’—and took off at full speed to play with the other girls). You have taken care of him since he was born and he has learned to walk and talk, and has built up a list of things which, in a shadowy way, he knows something about; he knows he mustn't play with the fire, tease the baby; he has learnt quite a lot of things by listening, he may know both his names, his address, and how old he is, he may not have seen a fire-engine but he has heard of them. Now here he is, handed over to a strange lady and thirty or forty other children all coming to look at him and ask him his name—it must be all very frightening. Sonny has come to school to learn to read. I hope you haven't been holding him up—some children still come to school scared out of their wits with stories about the teacher.