CHILD NUTRITION

Evening Star, Issue 23175, 26 January 1939, Page 9

CHILD NUTRITION

ADDRESS BY HEALTH MINISTER'S WIFE KNOWLEDGE AND ITS APPLICATION A WIDE GAP TO BE BRIDGED An interesting address on nutrition and child development and the problem of finding means to bridge the wide gap between scientific knowledge and its application to humanity’s needs was given to the teachers of home science at present meeting in Dunedin by Mrs P. Fraser, wife of the Education Minister yesterday. “We lay people must take an interest in science so that we can understand how it can affect and is already affecting our lives,’’ she said. “ It can be a friend or an enemy. Physical science goes on changing our conditions, and we must know more aboqt it. Science is changing pur lives more than all our other activities put together. Politics, economics—they all make far less actual difference to our present and future than does science.” The outstanding feature of the present age was the extent to which the life of man was affected by the remarkable growth of science, she went on. Not only had the development of scientific processes had a profound and disturbing effect on social conditions, but the extension of scientific knowledge and the increasing application or the scientific method in all directions had transformed people’s mental outlook and evoked new conceptions in every phase of life and culture. If people were to become conscious of their own capacities, they had to understand these many-sided implications. UNCONTROLLED POWER. “ I feel we cannot stress this under standing of science too much,” Mrs Fraser emphasised. She had recently read a survey of the work done in the various sciences during 1936, and had been impressed by the fact that all through the survey ran the reflection that power was increasing more rapidly than the ability to control it. Instruments were developing more rapidly than the minds which used them. Mrs Fraser illustrated this conclusion by quoting discoveries and the extent of the application of them. In this age, when science had made two blades of grass ' grow where only one grew before—and the potential plenty of the modern world could not be overstated —man had over-reached himself because he had not only not understood science, but was using it only piecemeal. That could be a danger, unless distribution could bo scientifically studied, linking up the facts about trade with the facts about population, the facts about public health with the facts about wages, and so on. The basic things—food and clothing—were here in an abundance which no other age ever had or thought possible. With food in abundance, the next thing was clothing. Although the making of fabrics out of vegetable fibres had come down through the a"es, the modern methods of achieving these ends had been radically transformed, although in some cases old methods had persisted into the present century, and Mrs Fraser spoke of a tan pit in Normandy and microscopic research on a scrap_ of neolithic relic to illustrate this point. There had been thousands of years of experience between the traditional practices and a great amount of monej spent on successful invention. We seem to have solved the problem of production with regard to food and clothing,” she said, ” although the problem of distribution seems to remain unsolved. Perhaps that can be solved by the study of hard facts rfid the collection of statistics, perhaps by training the child.” This led Mrs Fraser to a discussion of an interesting experiment of child development being tried out in London. It was a most valuable scheme, and it was felt that_ here, at least, science was turning its attention to human beings. The education that was being received was not by lecture or pamphlet, but by acting and doing. “ Our civilisation is very scientific in its attitude to problems of engineering, aviation, and so on, but highly unscientific in regard to others, such as education, polities, etc., she said. “ Here in Dunedin you are doing sane, practical work which deserves alf the encouragement that can be given to it. All I can say is, / Carry on the work; let’s build a nation Mrs Fraser was introduced by Professor A. G. Strong, dean of the Home Science Faculty of the University of Otago, and after she had answered u question or two and taken part in a general discussion, was thanked for her address, on the motion of Dr Elizabeth Gregory, president of the New Zealand Home Science Alumme Association, and Professor Strong.