CHILDREN WHO RUN TO SEED

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 58, 1 December 1917, Page 10

CHILDREN WHO RUN TO SEED

BRITISH PLAN TO SAVE WASTED . LIVES. Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, British Minister of Education, addressing a conference of educational authorities and teachers at York on September 14, said that the handling of the youth of tho country was not giving us the kind of population we deserved. "Wo have too many sickly children, too many crippled children, too many defective children, too many ignorant and undeveloped children. Above all, we have too many- children who, Having been properly brought up mentally and morally during their school life, rolapso into ignorance and a kind of barbarism during tho period of adolescence."

In all .this we were tolerating a_ gigantic and quite avoidnble waste of human life, and one of the tasks which devolved -upon our generation.was to save that waste and to lay the foundation for an altogether better order of society. The employment of children mid voting persons for proht ought to be carefully circumscribed in the interests of the race, and the- Mate should use its power to prevent tlio physical strength of its young citizens heing prematurely used up ».V the industrial machine, or then; moral and intellectual perception being perpetually and artificially arrested. The Education Bill would prevent a pood many vouiir men and women running to seed. It would establish tlio physique and therefore increase, the earning power of a number of future workers who would otherwise sudor injury from premature employment. It would tend to raise adult wages and to promote a more extended and economical use of machinery. Wo could not bo altocether proud of the civilisation which our fellow-countrymen were defending with such magnificent valour. He wished he could help to make it, moro worthy of their idealism and their strength..