IMPORT CONTROL ON BOOKS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28542, 22 March 1958, Page 15

IMPORT CONTROL ON BOOKS

School Committees To Protest

(New Zealand Press Association) TIMARU, March 21. The Dominion Federation of School Committee Associations of New Zealand will register a protest to the Acting-Prime Minister (Mr C. F. Skinner) about the imposition of import restrictions on books. The twenty- first annual conference of the federation in Timaru today agreed on this action on the recommendation of the junior vice-president Mr H. P. Fowler (Western Southland) and Mr S. R. Heppleston (Wellington). Mr Fowler maintained that books were not primarily commodities. They were tools—tools of the mind and necessary prerequisites of intellectual development in the schools and beyond them. ‘‘lt is not practicable to distinguish between educational books and many other books,” Mr Fowler added. ‘‘ln recent years at a time when all imports increased by 54 per cent., book imports increased by 18 per cent.” The Government had made much of the fact that 100 per cent, of the 1956 educational books would be allowed into the country, said Mr Fowler, but that excluded whole departments of thought, philosophy, history, economics, art, drama, and many branches of science.