SCIENCE OF CHILDHOOD

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIII, Issue 256, 13 October 1923, Page 13

SCIENCE OF CHILDHOOD

Sir Michael Sadler, writing in the April number of the “World’s Chil-dren,-”—a magazine devoted to child welfare, which takes the place of and hopes to expand the “Record of the Save the Children Fund”— suggests that the various plans for educating and-in other ways promoting the wellbeing of children all over the world deserve the name of Science of Childhood. At present its form is dim; its beginnings lie more than a century behind us, but the promise of fulfilment is encouraging. At its root is compassion. ‘‘ Au instinct of compassion, ’ ’ says Sir Michael, “has led us on. Wo have been right in obeying it. Literally through the needs of babes and sucklings, there has been established a new strength which promises to bo the foundation of a great work for humanity. ’ ’

lhe poet Wordsworth, writing in 1845 to Seymour Tremenheere, then a well-known worker in English Education, suggested that too little value was set upon “the occupation of children out of doors, under the direction or by permission of their parents,” and too much upon the knowledge gained from books and the teachers in schools. How much of what is precious,” the poet added, “comes into our minds, in all ranks of society, not as knowledge entering formally i n the shape of knowlodge, but as infused through, the constitution of things and by the grace of God. ‘Those words, says Sir Michael, “might have been written not by the author of the “Prelude,” but bv \\ ordsworth’s contemporary, Pestalozzi Each version had a vision of the rar future.”

The cost of education is the dark shadow on the future, but Sir Michael adds:

“We must make up our minds to spend what needs to be spent upon education as part of the foundation of human welfare. A re-valuation of the comparative importance of different heads of public expenditure is called for and seems gradually to find wider acceptance. We cannot afford the education we need unless we spend less on drink and less on war. But without entering upon a discussion of what is involved in the second of these difficult questions. I venture upon one word of encouragement. It may prove to he at a later time when the humanising and enlightening influence of the schools have nentrated more deeply into the life of the people, to simplifv education. The time mav come whetn Wordsworth’s and Pestalozzi’s hopes can he realised. Thp surest and sharpest education lies in the stimulus and discinline of a widclv diffused culture and belief among the -n-hole nenple. “Thp science of childhood.” Sir Michael remarks. a chanfa alcn in the “duration of aduHs. The minds of adults must b« adiustod t« thn new standards of self-training and refinement—nnn chief task nf education is ‘to link the generations each with nach.’ ”