HEALTH & EDUCATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 116, 17 April 1939, Page 4

HEALTH & EDUCATION

LABOUR CONFERENCE. REPORTS DISCUSSED. WELLINGTON, April 15. Many aspects of the health and education systems wore touched on in remits before the conference of the Labour Party yesterday and on which the committee of education and health of which the Minister of Education and Health (Hon. ]’. Fraser) was chairman, reported. A request that the Government l>c asked to institute an inquiry into the administration of the Child Welfare Deportment with particular reference to (a) the advisability of appointing an honorary hoard of child welfare in each of the four centres, and (b) the present method of boarding out children, was contained in one remit.

Reporting on the question, the committee stated that a review and overhaul of certain activities of the child welfare branch of the Education Department was in operation with a view to very considerable improvements. The boarding-house system was to lie closely examined.

The following suggestions were approved and forwarded to the Government for favourable consideration: The abolition of corporal punishment; the raising of the school leaving age to 15 years; the institution of a course of training in kindergarten work at all training colleges ; the teaching of disease preventive methods in all schools and .adult education classes. On the recommendation of the committee the following proposals were not adopted : The provision of vocational training for all children over the ago of 12 years; a more liberal scale of payment for training college students; that Plunket work and kindergartens be State institutions: that the Maori langauge bo taught in all schools. The committee considered that any such propaganda as that envisaged in a remit advocating the teaching of Socialist philosophy in schools would violate fundamental educational principles. A proposal for the teaching of sex hygiene and first-aid in all schools, the committee said, was to be embodied as far as practicable in health and hygiene instruction. PROPAGANDA IN SCHOOLS.

The inclusion in the curriculum ol social and political economy was advocated in another remit. This, the committee reported, was provided for now in civics and would have adequate treatment in future courses and text books. Rut though the committee favoured comprehensive treatment of the subject, it was opposed to any type of propaganda in the school. A further remit urged the abolition of Rible-i 11-school teaching. The committee reported that it felt it would be liiglilv undesirable to raise this issue into" one of first-class importanceand recommended the conference to leave the question of improving and safeguarding the free, secular and compulsory education system in the hands of the Parliamentarv Labour Party. The recommendations of the committee on these points were adopted. Also on the recommendation of the committee, the conference decided that a proposal concerning the necessity for the appointment of additional official visitors to mental hospitals !>c referred to flic Minister of Health for favourable consideration in reasonable relation to requirements. A proposal for a report regarding the necessity for the sterilisation of the unfit was rejected on the strong recommendation of the committee. Siinilar action was taken on requests, for the establish of racial eugenics clinics at St. Helens hospitals, and for the establishment ol clinics for advice on birth control to women with mental or physical disabilities. A request for an investigation into working conditions of nursing trainees in public hospitals was approved and referred to the Minister of Health for favourable consideration. The committee stated that the wages of nurses and other hospital employees had been

largely increased and hours of wo \ considerably reduced since the Labou Government assumed office.

HEALTH REGULATIONS. Proposals for the stricter entorcoment of health regulations m hotels, restaurants and milk bars, and to general education in the prevention o nutritional and other disease were approved. . A scheme for the training of housekeepers and the utilisation of tliei services to assist ailing mothers, ami others in need of such help, the committee reported, had been consideiccl by the Government from all angles. Legislation would probably be mtioduced next session providing for two years’ training of girls in smallei hospitals who would then be available as nursing and domestic aids. The Government is to be asked n consider the advisability of legislatively empowering all appropriate loca bodies to institute municipal milk supplies.