TOPICS OF THE TIMES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4812, 22 February 1936, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

The Family the Source;

“The chief educational instrumentality should always be the family. If parents do not themselves instruct, guide, shape and discipline their children, education in any true sense becomes almost impossible. The school itself, however important, is and always should be a subordinate and cooperating educational agency. If it supports and strengthens the influence of the family, well and good. If it combats that influence, disaster waits just around the corner. If there be no family education, the school, do what it will, can never take the family’s place. The school, without the family, may easily become almost an obstacle to education, part'cularly when accompanied by the silent influence upon the youthful mind and feeling of the sensational happenings of the moment as recorded in the press from day to day. The school becomes an obstacle to education when it subordinates or neglects discipline, when it endeavours to substitute elaborate paraphernalia for the very simple instrumentalities of true education.”—Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, in an address delivered at the opening of the 182nd year of Columbia University (U.S.A.). Future of the Crown Colonies. “To talk of the Crown Colonies being handed over wholesale as Mandates to the League,” the Colonial Secretary said, “is to presume that the peoples can be treated as mere chattels. But we are bound to consult their wishes, and I have no doubt that, if we were to do so, we should find the vast majority of them content and anxious to stay in their present situation. To say that implies no criticism of the Mandate System. In fact, the sentiment of the people in the Colonies is due to our having for a long time past in our Colonial Government practised the very principles laid down by the League of Nations for the government of Mandated territories. We have acted primarily as trustees for the welfare and happiness of the peoples in the Colonies, and they have a lively appreciation of the many benefits which they have received under the British Crown.”—Mr. Malcolm Macdonald.