TRAINING THE CHILD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 September 1939, Page 10

TRAINING THE CHILD

PLACE IN CHANGING WORLD. “Training and education are often confused,” said Lord Horder, the eminent physician, in a recent broadcast. “Education equips the child for particular conditions, training forms the character of its mind and spirit and also of its body, which influences both. This training of the child to ‘take its place in a changing world must go deeper than things academic. It must deal with those activities which become habits —through cleanliness, punctuality, tidiness, to respect, obedience and reverence; at first painful to the developing ‘l’d’ but eventually both pleasant to the individual and useful to the community. Now whatever the era, whether neolithic or neo-Georgian, this basic structure is essential seeing that conduct is the fundamental end of training. I am not impressed by that fashion in training which bids the child develop its ego unchecked and unguided. I cannot see of what service ‘self-expression’ is when as yet there is no developed self to express. Self — individuality—is a very slow growth. It is true that the beginnings of self are recognisable very early in life, but the thing to do with beginnings is to develop them, not to express them. What is it that we ultimately want? What will the child itself want later on when it reaches man’s estate? Training is a means to an end. To what end? To a peculiar, eccentric, ill-fit-ting end, or to the complete man or woman, the citizen, yet the citizen with personality? The answer is surely not in doubt.”