PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 November 1927, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

THE BOY AND HIS HOMEWORK

• Parents arc* not (loin*; their duty if they do not complain against excessive homework. 4he remedy lies in the direction of finding a correct balance between the personal eflort o the pupil and the amount ol actual teaching, .lust as the scales in music must he practised if real progress is to he made, so the pupil must learn irregular verbs, equations, formula', historical and geographical facts, etc. There is no royal road to learning suili fundamental facts, though a clever teacher cm smooth the path by analogies, contrasts, mnemonics, tables, illustrations, and other devites. Rut really olVeetive teaching for five and a half hours every day to small classes should not need the support ol home lessons for three or more hours.”-

“ A Director of Education ” writing n the " Birmingham Post.”

DIET FADDISTS. There are individual propagandists who, without any responsibility, find themselves able to instruct the public as to ihe actual cause of cancer and iunimio:able other ailments, If oni t domestic cat only knew the risks lie is said to run h.v following his instinctive dislike for mixed diet, lie would not sleep so peacelully on the hearthrug. Since lite began the guidance of instinct in regard to the choice of food has been supreme. Even still it would probably be well to allow il some weight. Ihe laws ol health aie not to he summed up by any number of slogans. One learned physician has informed us that the lour secrets of health are early rising, exercise, personal cleanliness, and leaving the | lahle iinoppressed. But are they C Dr. E. 11. Snell, president of the Society of Medical Officers of Health, at the Royal Sanitary Institute Congress at Hastings. THE HEREDITARY PRINCIPLE To Americans hereditary peers seem an anehronisni ; hut so do the -Monarchy and the Church. Must we Americanise our political institutions, ns wo have so largely Americanised our social and artistic life? To deny the principle of heredity is as foolish as to deny the origin of species, which is founded on the undemocratic method ol tli: selection of the fittest. Heredity is the olio streak of science in the casual amalgam of our L'onstiution. The accidents of birth are not so dangerous as the accidents of the ballot. The House of Lords has never thrown up such freak legislators as the House of Commons. It is often advanced against the old peerage that, being landlords, they passed laws to favour tlieir own interests. Every class when it has the power favours its own interests. The landlords did so in the eighteenth century. The manufacturers did so in the hist century, "hen they bullied Parliament into repealing the Corn Laws that the.' might pay lower wages. But put all the sinecure pensions and all the Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth century into one scale, and the £300.000.000 now paid annually for public assistance and I social services, old age, and widows’ pensions, doles, outdoor relief, eduoaI tion. rent and housing subsidies, into la. other scale, you will see the landlord-’ scale 11 y up and kick the beam. ' A.A.8.” in the •' Evening Standard (Loudon).