PROBLEM FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 224, 21 September 1928, Page 6

PROBLEM FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS

(To the Editor.)

Dr. Criohton Miller, addressing teachers and parents at a meeting of the Hygiene Council At Cambridge (England), and referring to mental defectives, said: "Do not poke fun a t the red-haired boy or girl, nor tell a hungry child he is greedy; do not in any way belittio a child." The mental defective is haunted by the feeling that lie is different from others He often has a longing to cheat simply to prove to himself that he is able to thwart a normal person. The child led to believe himself inferior goes in one of two directions He either accepts his supposed position of inferiority and is a mild cypher all his life or he resorts to methods designed to prove his ability to outwit society, legally or illegally and may then become that common pest a "smart" criminal, who by cunning long defeats the ends of justice. Wo have had an example of that kind here recently. The modesty of the average Englishman is probably due to the way in which English parents have laid stress upon such sayings as "little boys should be seen and not heard" and have kept their children in constant subjection, and the American gets his bombast and absurd overvaluation of Eelf from his early freedom and often unmerited praise. It can be seen that New Zealand as a nation must pay attention to the errors of training at home" and in school to avoid either extreme, and then there will not be a new crop of "defectives," or self-boosters-at-all-costs, or semi-criminal egotists to bother us. The fewer parents there are the greater seem to become their responsibilities, and as childless teachers can never prove to be' half as good at character formation as those whose blood has been stirred by parenthood it 'is to parents rather than to' teachers we must look for the distribution of praise and blame in nicely-balanced proportions. SWELLED HEAD.