THE BODY FIRST

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 145, 16 December 1933, Page 16

THE BODY FIRST

THEN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

"I am convinced that any means that ■we can make to ensure full bodily development for all boys in all forms throughout the school should be subordinated even to the means we take to ensure their mental development," stated the principal of Rongotai College, Mr. F. M. Renner, in his report at the prize-giving ceremony yesterday afternoon.

"Let Nature have her chauco with ■the body first and similar development must follow in the mind," he continued. "Stimulate the mind and neglect the body and disaster will follow. . The interdependence of the one process with the other, or rather the subordination of the one to the other is the reason why I attach so much importance to periodical physical measurements carefully kept and tabulated." A scrutiny of such measurements hnd been on many occasions not only of great assistance to him but of great value to the parents in dealing with the problem of retarded development. He. asked parents to encourage their boys to take the fullest advantage of the facilities which the school provided to ensure a boy's normal development into healthy manhood. "I. would particularly at this, stage advocate that boys should bo taught to box," said Mr. Renner. "Boxing is not prize-fighting, nor is it wrestling. No boy stands any risk of being butchered to make a Eoman holiday. He is taught, and admirably so, by ■Messrs. Heron and D. Edwards —to use his eyes, hands, and feet, to keep his >temper, and to take and give hard knocks with a smile. At our annual boxing tournament we staged some 50 bouts and there was not one of them that the tendorest hearted mother might not have viewed with equanimity, and there were many instances of "chivalrous treatment of an opponent that warmed my heart to see."