Youth Welfare

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 109, 1 February 1941, Page 15

Youth Welfare

“Some educationists are by no means happy in their minds about youth welfare. We believe that the full implications and possible effects of the scheme need very careful consideration. “Every educationist is eager to see the physique of British youth cultivated to the utmost; but if we are wise we shall refrain from imitating the mass movements of the dictatorships. We must not seek to turn all British boys out in one pattern. “Despite ‘the spectacular military successes of the Nazis, it has yet to be proved that the citizen soldiers of Britain, trained in our secondary and elementary schools, and—not least—on our cricket and football fields, will show less initiative, less courage or endurance than the regimented legions of the enemy. “We must be scrupulous to preserve the admirable features of our own ' British forms of training—forms which | may look haphazard and amateurish ( by the side of Continental methods of i mass-production, but forms peculiarly suited to the development of those qualities which we value as a demo- >' cracy. < “It would be a grevious thing if the native inspiration of such organizations , as the Scout movement were to be lost through attempts to bring them into c dull conformity with some huge 1 national scheme which lacked their C essential element of spontaneity.”— / “Yorkshire Post.”