SCHOOL LUNCH HOUR

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 11 April 1922, Page 5

SCHOOL LUNCH HOUR

(To the Editor) . . Sir,—The matter of dinner interval for school children recently nieurjoned in your columns is only one point on 'which our present system of priuvation ! still disregards its own object. .Free, secular, and compulsory education as an experiment but (50 "years,old. and we are unable yet to fully estimate the value of the experiment. Those Mty : years have nevertheless given an ink , ; ling that the experiment, lias not hen; ■'who 11 v successful; yet we .ire -low to i realise the facts and to amend then:. iThe chief object of the system is, I suppose, to equip Lbe mlrg generation for the battle, of life in front _of them. The feiain element of equipment for that- battle are sound physique, high moral standard, eommpiisense, and last and least, intellectual attainment—in that order. ■ But for 50 years the order has been reversed by education, and everything else relatively neglected for intellectual attainment—or what is believed to be such, 'mainly, as it would appear from -the nightly travailings of my children, arithmetic. What does it avail the edentulous man of 25 that in the sixth he could unerringly distinguish the noun clause in apposition from the adjectival ' clause; but ate a. white-bread sandwich and a biscuit in the playground because it was too far to go home for a solid 1 dinner ? What does it avail the housewife that at the age of nine in a cramped schoolroom on a> glorious noonday while the lambkins were at play, she found the correct answer to "A'gentleman collected 12,500 stamps. He kept 1260 for himself, and divided, the rest equally among 14 boys and 10 girls. How many stamps, had each? ' What dbes it avail the country which, in calamitous war, can place only_ 20 per cent of its young men physically fit in the field, that, those same young men, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, ran a mile from school, bolted a. dinner, ran back, and with anaemic brains, their blood being diverted to such physical necessities as stomachs and less, wrestled manfully but; ineffectively with indeterminate decimals:'' I think the system, is improving. Teachers have long recognised many ot its futilities, but their calls for reforms are not readily heeded by central authorities. Let us bogui., one little reform, and give the kids mom time for their dinner. I am, etc., PATERFAMILIAS.