Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents Part 4

Although television is not yet available in New Zealand, its introduction is inevitable. Overseas reports of its effects on children, adolescents, and even adults indicate that plans to minimize any harmful effects in New Zealand should be made without delay.

The arrival of another visual and auditory influence will add weight to the suggestion made to the Committee that liaison should be established between all the various censoring authorities.

Objectionable publications, films, broadcasting, and television have been the subject of expert appraisal in many countries. The Committee has made its recommendations in this section of the report fully aware that many authorities can describe these matters as no more than secondary influences in the causation of juvenile delinquency.

To what degree these things are directly causative no one can say. Their influence is imponderable. But whatever their influence, the Committee is firmly of the opinion that practical measures to control what is offensive to many would be an indication of a renewed concern for the moral welfare of young people. The result would be the replacement of undesirable material with something much better.

_VIII. The School_

=(1) Teacher and the Child=

For several reasons, there has been a change in the relations.h.i.+p that used to exist between teacher and child. Earlier the teacher lived in, and was part of, the community and so knew something of local conditions and the tensions of his pupils' lives. This gave him a more intimate knowledge and sympathetic understanding of a child's difficulties.

Today in the cities, and particularly in the quickly growing urban areas, there are different conditions. Schools are new and big, without a tradition of long community service; teachers have difficulty in finding accommodation in the district from which their pupils come; to meet the shortage of permanent staff many partially trained persons have to be used as relieving teachers; even qualified teachers have to move frequently to meet promotion requirements.

As a result the knowledge that once came to a teacher from sharing the same environment as the child has now to be acquired in some other way and, probably, from within the school. This knowledge is of great importance in diagnosing maladjustments that might lead to delinquency.

In primary schools the situation is met by the establishment of a system of visiting teachers who can investigate the circ.u.mstances of a problem child. Perhaps of greater importance, the presence of visiting teachers reminds cla.s.s teachers that children have difficulties out of school. The Committee feels that:

(_a_) As many of the problems have a medical origin, there should be as much official liaison as possible between the public health nurses and the visiting teachers. This would automatically make the services of a medical officer available.

(_b_) Particularly in rapidly growing industrial areas, the number of visiting teachers should be increased.

In pos t-primary schools there is at present no official system of linking the home and school in the investigation of problems.

Traditionally the headmaster has done this, but with the increase in the size and complexity of schools he has now too little time for this work.

Post-primary princ.i.p.als, in their evidence, appeared worried by the problems of conduct arising from the inability of pupils to leave school until they have reached fifteen years of age. It has already been shown that the pattern of juvenile delinquency which is the subject of this investigation is found particularly in this age group.

It therefore seems desirable that some help should be given to post-primary schools. The Committee makes no specific recommendation[2]

how this should be done, although it is emphatically of the opinion that there is a need for this help, and that the personality of those doing the work is of more importance than the question as to which organization should control them.

This is only the immediate step. Everything possible should be done to restore the community bond between teacher, parent, and child--by the stabilizing of the teaching service, by the provision of houses for teachers in newly developed areas, and by continuing the effort to increase the number of women in the service.

=(2) Co-education=

At the hearing of the immorality charges in the Court at Lower Hutt the prosecuting officer attributed the delinquency, in part, to the a.s.sociation of boys and girls in co-educational schools. This directed the attention of the Committee to the effect on morality of the propinquity of the s.e.xes in schools.

There seemed to be no disagreement on the question of educating boys and girls of primary-school age together. The desirability of co-education at the post-primary school level, however, was frequently disputed. Many opinions were heard, for and against.

The Committee was not concerned with the relative values of the different types of school, except in so far as they had an effect on juvenile delinquency.

Statements were made that co-educational schools did, in fact, increase the chances of immorality, but although the Committee investigated these charges it could not find that acts of immorality among pupils did in fact arise from their a.s.sociation at school.

There was evidence that one girl had incited seven boys to s.e.xual misbehaviour on the way home from a co-educational school. Thorough investigation proved to the Committee that the group came from the same neighbourhood and had become known to one another from their home and street a.s.sociation. Acts of indecency had occurred long before they went to the post-primary school.

Senior pupils of an intermediate school were concerned in depravity, both heteros.e.xual and h.o.m.os.e.xual. The trouble probably spread through the acquaintances.h.i.+ps made at school, but in all cases the history of the instigators, in intelligence and environment, showed either that they were already concerned in immoral acts outside the school or that they had home circ.u.mstances conducive to delinquency.

In many of the cases that were brought to the notice of the Committee the name of the school was a.s.sociated with the offender, even although the offences did not occur within the school or arise from it. This linking of the school with the offender is unfortunate, as it is unsettling to the other pupils of the school and disturbing to the parents of the district.

=(3) School Leaving Age=

The school leaving age is now 15, but there are obviously some pupils, in the upper forms of primary schools and the lower in post-primary, who, either through lack of ability or lack of interest, are not only [not][3] deriving "appreciable benefit" from their further education, but are indeed unsettling and sometimes dangerous to other children.

The School Age Regulations (1943/202) permit of exemption from attendance at school in cases where the Senior Inspector of Schools in any district certifies that a child of 14 who has completed the work of Form II is not likely to derive any appreciable benefit from the facilities available at a convenient school or the Correspondence School.

The Committee recommends:

(_a_) That the Department should consider whether some better method of educating these children can be evolved. It feels that the mere granting of an exemption certificate may transfer the problem from the school, where there is at least formal oversight, to the community, where this is not the case.

(_b_) Where the underlying reason for exemption is the misconduct of the child, the Senior Inspector should have power to grant the exemption subject to the child being supervised by the Child Welfare Division of the Department.

=(4) Relations With the Child Welfare Division=

From the evidence received it is clear that princ.i.p.als of schools would welcome a closer liaison, by regulation, with the Child Welfare Division. A high degree of co-operation already exists in some places, but it depends on the personalities of the people concerned and is not general.

With a full realization of the desirability of secrecy in the affairs of a delinquent child, but also with the knowledge that the princ.i.p.al of a school should know as much as possible of his pupils, and in most cases has known them longer, and in conditions of less tension than the Child Welfare Officer, it is suggested that:

(_a_) Where a child in a school, or transferred to it, has come to the notice of the Child Welfare Division for acts of delinquency, the princ.i.p.al of the new school should be informed.

(_b_) Where a pupil is to be charged before the Children's Court the princ.i.p.al should be asked to make a recommendation regarding the future of the child either independently of, or jointly with, that of the Child Welfare Officer. At the present time the princ.i.p.al is merely asked to report to the Child Welfare Officer, although, from his longer experience of the child, he may be in a better position than that officer to suggest what should be done.

=(5) s.e.x Instruction in School=

The views of the Committee on the whole subject of s.e.x instruction are given elsewhere in the report. Here it is emphasized that, apart from the biological aspect as a part of nature study in the primary schools and general science in the post-primary schools, the school in general is not the place for cla.s.s instruction in s.e.x matters.

Incidental features of s.e.x hygiene will arise naturally from physical education and can be adequately treated there.

It is felt that the teaching of the fuller aspects of the s.e.x relation between men and women requires an emotional link between the teacher and the taught, and it should not be looked on as a duty of the school to forge this link. But where ignorance persists, through the failure of the natural agencies, the school should try, if a suitable person is available on the staff, or by the employment of a specialist, to remedy the omission.

=(6) "New Education"=

Several witnesses have claimed that the philosophy underlying the New Zealand education system is a predisposing cause of s.e.xual delinquency, but in the absence of direct evidence, which is obviously difficult to obtain, such claims can only be an expression of personal opinion.

Similarly, the terms "play way" and "free expression" have been quoted to show that traditional external disciplines have given way to a concentration on the development of the personality of the child--a development which could lead to licence. But as there are not sufficient comparative figures available for New Zealand, and as reports from overseas suggest that the pattern of immorality is a world-wide one, the Committee is unable to reach a conclusion on this matter.

It does, however, feel justified in suggesting that nothing but benefit could come from representatives of the Department of Education attending meetings of Parent-Teacher and Home-and-School a.s.sociations to enable responsible and interested parents to obtain a clearer understanding of modern educational aims before expressing their views.