TRAINING FOR FREEDOM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1939, Page 6

TRAINING FOR FREEDOM

THE MIND OF THE CHILD. "Some years ago many people seemed to hold the opinion that the mind of every child was like a blank sheet of paper on which you could write anything you wanted." said Professor J. H. Nicholson, principal of Hull University, in a recent address. "Now, however, it is realised that children possess different gifts, worth developing even when they were not intellectual. Nobody who set a marigold plant would expect it to turn into a rose, but a few years ago it was the general impression that clever children were the roses of education, and that all the other flowers were rather poor imitations of roses. Wo have got a bit beyond that now. We still realise how important it is that we should have clever men and. women to lead and guide us, but we have begun to appreciate the wider range of qualities, and there , are even seme who prefer the marigolcis to the roses. In a free community such as England, every citizen must be trained to be capable of coming to reasoned convictions and to have the courage of them, to show readiness to tolerate different points of view, and to work in co-operation with others. I hope and pray we may have many more years to go as a free community of people and play cur parts m the community of nations. We want to defend ourselves, but we want also to be worth saving. We do not want to lose our grip, courage and freedom. We want to emerge through this struggle as a free people, and to be a free people means to be a people capable of taking decisions for ourselves with reason, tolerance and judgment,”