Less Capable of Helping

Te Ao Hou, November 1964, Page 51

Less Capable of Helping Most parents are less capable of helping their children with educational and vocational guidance than are their Pakeha counterparts. Many possess little knowledge of the vast range of careers available to their children, and many have only romantic notions of careers for their children, ideas such as ‘doctor’ or ‘lawyer’, not fully realising how much is demanded of one for professions such as these. The Foundation is very conscious of this lack of knowledge and is doing much to spread information on the subject; for example, it has recently distributed a useful pamphlet which summarizes the most important facts and gives sources of further information. Maori parents are more inclined to adopt a passive, disinterested, ‘laissez faire’ attitude towards their children. Parents and children have not much mutual confidence in their ability to discuss and solve problems together. Children are generally left to their own resources where their personal problems or their future is concerned: Maori parents do much less than Pakehas to help their children along more secure paths, and they are not as influential as they could be in persuading tempted youngsters not to enter ‘big-money’ occupations. Many parents are reluctant to send their children on to higher education because of the costs involved; very often they do not realise that there are grants readily available, or how to apply for them. (In my own youth I received no benefit from scholarships because of parental ignorance.) The Foundation will prove its value if it can use its influence to persuade even a few parents to keep intending schoolleavers at school for a longer time. Another formidable obstacle is the fact that Maoris are comparatively retarded in their education. The report of the Commission on Education shows that on the average, our children are six to nine months behind Pakehas in their academic attainment; one realises the seriousness of this when one observes that the Maori youngster seldom catches up with his Pakeha schoolmates, so that few of them actually reach the final goals which they should reach.