HEALTHY SCHOOL CHILDREN

Evening Star, Issue 23373, 16 September 1939, Page 14

HEALTHY SCHOOL CHILDREN

IMPROVEMENT IN BRITAIN “1 am getting rather tired of elderly gentlemen at conferences talking academically about malnutrition* Let us call it by. its proper namestarvation. And let us face the question; the staple foods are being produced in the country, but young South . Africa is not getting them.” Mr T. A. Blakeley, retiring president of the Natal Teachers’ Society, mad® this blunt statement during his address at the annual conference in Maritzhurg. “In the last qtWrter of a century the stamina of our school children has declined,” he said. “ England’s baa improved. .It is not a case of on* country being prosperous and the other not. England, despite her unemployed and an income tax of 4s 5d in the £. has faced the- question of 1 underfed children. We have not. And England in her hour of need is reaping th» benefit to-day. Of the thousands who have attested under, the Conscription Act 90 per cent, have been passed medically fit and 84 per cent, are in. the * A * class.” t In England every child has his bottlo of milk daily. In South Africa w® promise the child the surplus milk, but when is there a surplus? “ I visited England two years ago and was struck by the healthly appearance of the school children. There tha position has been reversed. When I came to Natal 27 years ago I was struck bv the general air of well-being among the school children. It was in striking contrast with the impoverished under-fed appearance of the children I: had left behind in the industrial north of England.”