THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 1907. THE HEALTHY SCHOOLBOY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8330, 11 January 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 1907. THE HEALTHY SCHOOLBOY.

The Rev. A. A. David, headmaster of Clifton College, delivered a lecture recently on "Education and National Needs," at a meeting of. the Parents' National Education Union, in London. Mr David said that for practical purposes they might distinguish between two kinds of educational aim. Schoolmasters might regard themselves now as responsible to parents,and as working up to such an equipment of the individual boy as would make him ready to fend for himself in the struggle of life, or again as servants of the State, responsible to her for the quality, the national value, of those continually passing through their hands. Ideally these two aims, the individual and the national, were one. The standard of comfort in the public schools had developed to such an extent in these days that boys were sent to them who formerly would have been thought far too delicate to go to school at all. They had to be careful, however, that they did not, in deference to their fears for the more delicate boys, soften down what he might term the standard of hardiness. They must have English bodies as good as they could malce them to put English spirits into. And alongside of this he would encourage a sense of a boy's own responsibility in keeping well. A boy ought to be ashamed to catch a cold, and should cultivate a healthy reticence about his ailments. He. recommended drilling and shooting for the boys of public schools. Then, again, it was an old English tradition that every gentleman was at the disposal of his country or his county for certain public duties. Social service of this kind was not appreciated by the upper and upper middle classes in these days. Boys should, therefore, be instructed on the facts, and the history of the facts, of existing social condition, with trade unions, co-operation and municipal government.