THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILDREN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16558, 23 May 1914, Page 10

THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILDREN.

Probably people who look only at tho surface of things will think Mrs Wells is concerning herself quite unnecessarily in the appeal she makes this morning on behalf of the children. It is the fashion to regard this as tho day of tho young folk—the day when they have more freedom, more comforts, more opportunities than they ever have had before —but this view leaves out of account the problems Mrs Wells has in her mind. Her reproach is not that the country is standing still and doing nothing for its future citizens, but that it is doing not half as much as it could do and should do. We are not discharging our full duty to posterity when we spend a million a year in offering a superficial education to our boys and girls and then leave chance to determine whether they get value for our money or not. The whole system requires closer and more efficient personal supervision, and closer and more efficient supervision, as Mrs Wells points out, would mean more expenditure. Our correspondent seizes upon the excuse presented by the fact of the Education Department and the Defence Department being under the control of the same Minister to suggest that the Government is more anxious to produce well-trained soldiers than it is to turn out well-equipped men and women, but there is no need to suppose that Mr Allen and his colleagues have formed such a perverted conception of their obligations to the community. This is not a party question and all Governments have been alike in starving the education system. What is wanted is persistent agitation by tho people themselves for a better system, for a system that would ensure tho money already provided by the State being used to better purpose and more money being provided wherever it was required. That more money is needed there can be no doubt and that it could be expended to enormous advantago is equally certain. We have no right to bo consigning classes of fifty and sixty and seventy children to a singlo teacher, and wo have no right to bo leaving them utterly . without supervision in the playground and many of them without 'supervision in the classroom. The boys and girls of to-day will be the future citizens to whom we shall bequeath a huge burden of debt and a tremendous , load of responsibility, and it is our bounden duty to, see' that they are as fully prepared mentally and physically as they can be for tho demands the years will make upon them.