AMONG OURSELVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 209, 5 September 1927, Page 11

AMONG OURSELVES.

A WEEKLY BUDGET.

(By CONSTANCE CLYDE.)

SUSSIAH MARRIAGE ODDITIES. Modernists are fond of assuming that men and women rather dislike taking vows, whereas lovers, as Chesterton P°™ <»*> jow eternal fidelity to one another without any compulsion whatever. Russia, however, is modernist, but, as many wiH stories are going about concerning her ideate, one authority tells the exact facts, which he declares really represent the country as it is at the moment. Marriages there, as most of us know, are either registered or unregistered, but there seems little difference between the two, as an unregistered unionist, to coin that expression, cannot enter into a registered marriage. In both cases, however, dissolution is easy. As regards finance, each keeps whatever he or S ?L g mto tne Partnership, which, as things are now in Russia, is probably inconsiderable. Whatever is made after- "■"*» *?*««*. belongs to both. Illegitimate children have the same rights as others, also, no child of any sort, after ten years of age, can be adopted without its own consent. The equality of the seres seems to be quite an understood thing with the people of this vast country, for the marriage age of both sexes has been put down at sixteen. How all this works out is, of course, another affair, but for a system that ignores the sacramental ideal it seems the best of its kind.

POOR TEACHER!

"Time and Tide" publishes, without comment, a long letter from an idealist on the treatment of children in the State schools. Unfortunate teachers aro held up to scorn for "believing in corporal punishment," in spite of the fact that the teacher who "believes" often very seldom acts, while the non-believer may go on the, lines of Midshipman Easy's teacher, who Amnmvafi the birch all round, but quite forgot to mention that he got in. some good work with the «■"»! An incident is given of a young girl who, when told to sit up, exclaimed: "Oh, dear," and when reproved for rudeness, said "Oh, dear" again. Besult, the cane! The objector does not realise that the child "Oh dearing" in its own home is merely being unpleasant, while in the ' school it is being an incitement to make some dozen other children start a revolt. The writer also cites the ead case of the usual "friend's child" who always "had a bilious attack" when a certain teacher was to officiate, this being "purely nervous in origin," as, later in the day, she waa happily playing ball. Do we not all remember that "awfully sick" feeling that we also had, not because a certain teacher was expected, but because of the subject taught? A New Zealand teacher i always had an answer when remonstrated with on this point, "Do you ever have to punteh your children yourself?" and when the answer came, "Yes"— invariably "Yes" if more than one in a family—he replied by a magnificent silence.

WHY CHINESE WOMEN DETERIORATED. Paradoxical as it seems, the position of the Chinese woman deteriorated largely tbrough her own virtues. That country looks back on a period of brilliant women —*n era of feminism more than two thousand years ago. In such olden days a woman discovered how to rear silkworms, while women historians were also known, spending useful lives in compiling their caetntrys annals. As a result, however, the men began to consider that the many virtues of their womenkind could well stand alone, without mental training, and education was gradually taken away from them. Mere moral books, concerning the duties owing by them rathe* than to them, became their only reading, and presently the custom of reading at all was dropped. We ; remember how the late DowagerI Empress of China, living in our own time, began life as a little slave girl, by sex and position forbidden this art. When she chanced to merit a reward she threw herself trembling on her knees and begged that the reward be permission to learn reading. This was the beginning of the strange career which finally gave her, incidentally through marriage, dominion over that vast empire.