WAR'S EFFECTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 143, 13 December 1940, Page 6

WAR'S EFFECTS

THE BOY OF TODAY

HEADMASTER ON DANGEROUS DOCTRINES NO MISGIVINGS The effect of the war on the schoolboy was one of the subjects dealt with by the principal of Rongotai College, Mr. F. Martyn Renner, at the breaking-up ceremony last night. He expressed confidence in the results of the teaching in New Zealand schools. Mr. Renner said that the reasons and causes of the present struggle had been kept out of the classroom — especially in the lower and middle school. One aspect alone had been emphasised, namely, that the struggle was between two diametrically opposed conceptions of life. A boy, like all young growing things, hated repression, and it was not a difficult matter to convince him to which side he should give his support. "Fortunately," said Mr. Renner, "here in New Zealand, as in other democratic countries, the system of education is the very antithesis of the repression of the child. The State gives the teacher very wide scope; it,^nakes no attempt to force education into a narrow groove, nor does it use education for ideological or political purposes. MORE VOCAL THAN EFFECTIVE. "I have no misgivings either about the teaching in New Zealand or about the results of that teaching. "You hear from time to time of groups of young people described as members of hot-beds of Socialism, of Communism, and so on. I do not think •we need take such groups or individuals very seriously. They are more vocal than they are effective or persuasive. In every age and in every free country, there have been, and are,! quite a number of young people who construe liberty as licence. Their sentiments may not be pleasant to listen j to, but in nearly every instance agej and experience in life brings for them, j in due course, common-sense and a i truer appreciation of real liberty. ] i "That has been my reply to parents who have come to see me from time to time, full of worry about their boys who, in the course of their studies after leaving school, have dived into the troubled waters of politics, psy-! chology, economics, or theology, and have swallowed large doses of Karl Marx or Jung or Freud.

"Well, be of good cheer. You can swallow salt water or any other fluid only to a certain point and then it all comes up again and leaves the swallower feeling t considerably better."