“A PLACE OF SONG”

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 September 1935, Page 3

“A PLACE OF SONG”

THE MODERN NURSERY

. There iff nothing wrong with the' modern nursery’ where children are encouraged to 'sing and dance and play with toys rather than golliwogk. That was the opinion expressed by an official of a babies’ club and the wife of a West End doctor when they replied to Dr Geoffrey Shaw, senior inspector of music to the Board of Education, who. speaking at the Oxford Summer Course on Music' and Music Teaching, said that there is not half enough singing in the nursery, states the London "Daily Mltii ”

Dr. Shaw said too, that he did not know what, has happened io the games in the nursery; that , they seamed to have disappeared in favour of ugly mechanical toys, that instead of nursery singing there were th'? grpmophom- and the wireless. An olliehil of the Babies’’ Club, of Danvers Street, Chelsea and Haiti]).'••.(ad. told ; “Daily .Mail” reporter that the modern nursery is “a place of cleanliness, light, and song.” “Till, wireless and the gramophone hove not replaced the nurery games," she said. “Our children still plav with much the same sort of t->y as was popular with the last generation. and we encourage mothers tn let Ibo little ones learn to sing and dance.' The wife of a '"'•••-I l-ind doctor, a young wem.it! with her first rltild. sold: “My own expi-rimiv* and my husband endorses my view proh -•• sionally is that modern mechanhal music stimulates in tiny children a love- of music and a desire to produce music of their own. “1 do not think it is correct to say that nursery games have disappeared in favour of stick ugly toys as the ■pdtfw-'-- ?!y opinion is that tli*' golliwo;- has divappe.ti'-d In favour of games."