SCHOOL ENTRANCE AGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21878, 14 August 1934, Page 13

SCHOOL ENTRANCE AGE

Sir, —I see there is to ho a meeting of school committees, teachers and the general public re the school entrance age. May 1 be permitted to say a word for those who cannot speak, for themselves and for the future physical wellbeing of our loved Dominion. It is <v proved scientific fact that no average child should be given brain work involving the least brain pressure until the seventh year of its age. The meeting is to be addressed by leading educationists. Why not bv some of our leading physiologists, psychologists and brain specialists? These are the men whose opinion is worth most on the physical side of this subject. Kindly permit me to ask some questions that may be forgotten at the meeting:—(l.) Are the upholders of lowering the school age able to trace the growth and development of the child mind from the merely sensational, vegetative period to that of judgment and reasoning-' (2.) Will they point out the percentage of mental diseases and lunacy in the Dominion in proportion to our population? To what extent, can they tell us, is early brain pressure in our schools responsible? (3.) In 1914, when the Groat War broke out, only 23 per cent of our young men were fit to go to the front. How much was too-early schooling to blame? (4) If the blood that ought to be going to build up healthy physical frames, with good bones and teeth, is diverted to brain activity too early surely here is one of the factors at least to blame for the deplorable condition of our children's teeth, Ask experienced leading dentists. One cannot but feel that this is not a question for popular audiences, stirred by oratorical play on their feelings, but for the calm judgment of our medical men and psychologists. J. Farquhaeson Jones, D.D.