OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 499, 11 September 1912, Page 6

OUR BABIES.

(By Hygeia).

Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. "It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom."

A MODERN UTOPIA. Whatever opinion our readers may have formed as to the entire practicability or otherwise of the Utopia of Canon Wilson, ex-head master of Clifton College, we have no doubt that al! will concur regarding the desirability of the main ideal he propounds for Boards of Education—viz., to aim to produce the healthiest, most intelligent, and best materials for the State.

Further, we shall, none of us, dispute the wisdom of any community that regards the insuring of the proper rearing of young children as "altogether the most important part of its work, and as the foundation of all the rest, not only because healthy children of six, well looked after, are such splendid material for schools and subsequent labour, but because the parents, trained in care for the children so far, are so keen to keep them afterwards in first-rate condition by securing them proper food, exercise, nlothing, fresh air, and sleep. I was struck with the emphasis they laid on these essentials." We heartily wish it could be said of ourselves in the Dominion, as Canon Wilson says of his conception of what might be: the belief of the people of my Utopia is that the first condition to be aimed at is the health of mind.» The prenatal and postnatal care of their children' has become with them an absolutely primal educational axiom, as well as their pleasure and pride. They believe that any neglect of this care, with its sure consequences of weakness and dissase", is virtually to make nugatory beforehand all educational and philanthropic efforts which may be made for the children in later years. What these efforts are many of our teachers know. There ia something infinitely pathetic in the way in which our teachers and doctors and voluntary helpers will feed and care for the poor children who have been irrevocably injured by earlier neglect in which we acquiesce (or which we don't attempt to stem). I did not dare to tell my friends in Tsenon what they would see if they visited England. Still less could we in New Zealand afford to let the Canon's Utopians know what they would come across in the way of deficient ntamina, bad teeth, indigestion, appendicitis, adenoids and consumption if they critically examined or own rising generation, and how far they would find our women incapable of complete and perfect motherhood, in spite of the fact that in a young Dominion with ideal natural conditions for health, and without the Old World curses of over-crowd-ing and poverty to contend against. We ought not to feel proud of having to expend half a million sterling a year on hospitals—an expenditure incurred mainy in the imperfect patching up of people suffering from ailments easily avoidable by the timely exercise of rational hygiene in rearing, habits and education. Canon Wilson continues: —

I must add that the sight of their schools and childten, in contrast with the vivid memory of some of our own, filled me with fresh admiration of many of our teachers, who in the face of the ceaseless stream of admission into their school of the neglected waste products of ouir cities, keep up heart and courage and hope, and out of such materials save a few. It is splendid, but it is not national education. To return for one brief instant to Tsenon. Their aim throughout has been to prevent, not to palliate, nor Ito punish. They have so far succeeded that though they have not abolished crime, they have practically abolished pauperism, destitution, and drunkenness. They have raised the standard of duty to children and provided a new pleasure in life. They are unanimous in attributing the industry, sobriety, happinness, and good sense of their people to the health and vigour and brotherly feeling that result from affectionate early acre, and to their inelligent and religious education, and to training in the use of freedom and of responsibility and of co-operation. 1 hope that this brief narrative may have suggested some defects in our national conception of the copes and aim of elementary education, and, in particular, its neglect of the earliest year of life.