YOUNG CHILDREN

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 53, 26 November 1929, Page 11

YOUNG CHILDREN

PROVISION FOR NURTURE AND EDUCATION LACKING AGES BELOW FIVE YEARS MOST SUSCEPTIBLE SIR GEORGE NEWMAN ON CONDITIONS IN ENLAND (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (“Times” Cables.) (Rec. November 25, 7 p.m.) London, November 24. “Proper provision for the nurture and education of at least two million of England’s three million children under the age of five does not exist, declares Sir George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health and the Board of Education, in the course of his annual report on the health of school children. “Lack of suitable arrangements for dealing with disease before school years is responsible for a great mass of preventive disease which contravenes education, frustrates the expenditure thereon, and sows the seeds of incapacity in the adult population. It is fallacious to suppose that to sterilise mental defectives will cut off the bulk of mental deficiency. The great majority of mentally deficient children are not directly the offspring of mentally deficient parents. The ages below five years are most susceptible.” For body and mind, Sir George Newman describes the Scout movement as the greatest demonstration of practical education the world has ever seen.