THE BUSTLED BABE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 22, 26 January 1934, Page 6

THE BUSTLED BABE.

Contrasts between the good child and the child who is not so good have long had a high place in works intended for the edification ■ of the young; the virtuous and self-reliant Harry Sandford shines all the more nobly ' by comparison with the spoilt and untutored 1 Tommy Morton* (says the "Manchester Guardian"). At the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre in New York various experts are now tackling something like the same idea not with pen and ink but in terms of infantile personality. A pair of twin brothers are being educated daily along different lines; the one is being allowed to develop as he would do by his own devices in the care of I an ordinary nurse, the other is being' intensively trained by experts. The result is said to be that at 19 months old the encouraged infant can dive and swim and use a pair of roller-skates, can climb into and out of awkward positions without the slightest sign of 1 fear, whereas the other child can do none of ' those things, nor does it show the same ready ■ intelligence and ratiocination in handling the toys which are offered it. - It is perhaps a I little too soon to claim that this process is turning out supermen to order and will presently prove that self-sufficient Mussolinis are not born but made in the nursery. There comes to mind rathev perversely the precocious babe of the "Bab Ballads" who "died an • enfeebled old dotard at five," and there are more authentic warnings in the brief careers of some of those learned children whom our 1 forefathers encouraged to acquire more Latin and Greek at the age of seven than some : recognised scholars now possess when they take their final degrees. Maturity is the test, not precocity; staying power is needed as well as fireworks.