VARIOUS COMMENTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 9 April 1924, Page 8

VARIOUS COMMENTS

BACK TO THE FARM”

One of the most disturbing problems confronting Australia mid New Zealand to-day is the continued drift of the population to the cities. This condition which is more marked in the Commonwealth than in the Dominion, is one worthy of grave consideration for it strikes at the root of our national prosperity. At a time when more production—and still more production —is required so. that the exports shall assume a volume. which will be proportionate to the huge debt which comes to us as a legacy of the Great War, it is particularly disconcerting to know that many young men who are pre-eminently adapted for

"the ideal life” forsake the country for the town. The occurrence is one not difficult of explanation. The towns offer allurement. The folly of an educational system that makes clerks, shop assistants and public, servants out ot sturdy {*untry youths impels the sons and daughters of these folic to leave the farm.—Southland Times.

I’OHGERY IN EXAMINATIONS

Considerable importance attaches to the decision of the Court of Appeal hearing upon the charges of forgery preferred against two students, till lately attending the Dunedin Training College, in connection with the teachers’ examinations held in August last. The two young men concerned adopted a method of procedure somewhat closely corresponding to that which in relation to horse-racing is popularly known as “rfinging-iti.” They arranged that in a subject in which one of them was weak the other should sit for examination in his stead, signing his companion’s name to the necescsary documents. The integrity of the great mass of candidates for examination is no doubt, and always has been, the outstanding safeguard against misrepresentation. But it has been shown that the system under which the examinations are conducted has weak points of which the unscrupulous are able to take advantage. The argument for the introduction of more adequate safeguards against such abuse should not. m>ed further emphasis.— Otago Daily Times.

SAVING THE INNOCENTS

Dr. Truliy King has reversed the record of King Herod. The monarch miscalled “The Great” slew all' the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under. Dr. King has set himself to reducing what, before his time, would have been called the natural death rate of like innocents, and in seventeen years his society and teachings have been a principal cause in reducing it so far as New Zealand is concerned, by half. As Dr. King’s methods are being followed now in an organised manner in Great Britain and Australia, and individually or more than individually in half the countries of the world, it is a reasonable conclusion that if he has not saved already more children than the tetrarch slew it is only a question of time before his good record will enormously surpass the bad one. —Dunedin Star.

NOT AT ANY PRICE

The most interesting and significant feature of the Greymouth Borough Council’s last meeting was, to many people, the debate dealing with the forthcoming visit of the British cruiser squadron to New Zealand—interesting, because of the suggestion that West Coast school children be taken r.o view the units of the British Navy ’when the ships arrive at Lyttelton; significant because of the insight the remarks of Cr. J. O’Brien afforded into the views of the Labour Party on national defence. According to the member for Westland, he is not in favour of allowing children to see the warships, as it “would be more or less propaganda.” No wonder that mistaken ideas concerning the West Coast generally, are held in other parts of the Dominion. An inspection of the British squadron would have at least some effect in counteracting the insidious propaganda to which the children of the Coast are too often subjected.—Greymouth Evening Star.

HEAD MASTERS’ REGULATIQES

Mr Parr wall be wise to give inThe new regulations recently promulgated by him. in regard to head masters, more particularly one which requires them to give at least half their time to actual teaching, may or may not be impracticable, as the bead masters declare. That is a question of experts. The public, however, to which the issue lias been referred by the parties at odds, will have small difficulty in deciding, after all the eontioversy to which they have been treated, that they are undesirable, Mr Parr himself has done his best to show that the regulation which has been objected to is unnecessary. The public has had no reason to conclude that the head masters of any considerable proportion of our larger schools are “slapkers” or “shirkers.” But some are, tb.e Minister has suggested. If that is so, it is a fair claim which I# made by the head masters ’a.ssopiption that those should be disciplined by putting them down the grading list as individuals, and not by putting into strait-jackets all the heads of a profession who have most impressed the public by their conscientiousness. —Dunedin Star.