NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22260, 7 November 1935, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

ENGLISH EDUCATIONAL AIMS The new aims of the English educational system were outlined in a recent address by Mr. Oliver Stanley, President of the Board of Education. Ho said perhaps the two chief points that had been realised were: —(1) That the old curriculum was too narrow for the needs of to-day when education aimed at developing Hhe individual not only as a wage-earner, but as a personality and as a citizen; and, (2) that children ditto red in their natural tastes and aptitudes as well as in their ages, and that there was considerable gain if we could group together those of the same age and aptitudes. Broadly speaking, lie supposed the curriculum would consist of three parts. The children would become familiar with the art of expression in their own language —that, they would all agree, was a first essential. Second, they would learn something of general science; and third, they would develop craftsmanship and the use of the hand and eye. "THE SIMPLEST SANCTION" The trouble with an embargo on arms, as with any sanction that attempts to cut off supplies, is that it involves blockade if it is to be effective, remarks the Listener in discussing the problem of applying sanctions. Otherwise, the arms may have to go by devious channels, but they can reach their destination. The conclusion emerges that much the simplest sanction is to stop imports from the country which has been defined as the aggressor in a dispute. This is simply a matter of customhouse regulation and does not call for any naval support. But its effects, though not immediate, are likely to prove exceedingly severe. A country pays for its imports by its exports, by gold, or by the surrender of securities and other titles to goods which its subjects hold abroad. A country at war needs to buy a great deal from abroad, and in proportion as it uses up its gold reserve and its foreign securities, an embargo on its exports can only end in a refusal of foreign manufacturers to deliver. , SAFER ROAD SURFACES 1 Science is at last being systematically applied to the new problems of road construction, notes the Daily Telegraph. The British Road Research Board has drawn' up a comprehensive programme and made a good beginning with it. The need was urgent. Beyond dispute, one of the main causes of the six or seven thousand road deaths each year is the state of the road surface. We have busy streets in London which are still of skating rink slipperiness, and others which are safe in any weather. There are striking differences between the high roads of one county and another. What is tha safest, the most durable, and the cheapest method of construction? To that question the Research Board should be able to supply an answer, for it is attacking the problem from various points. There is clearly an immense amount of work to be done, but we hope that the board will not neglect one of the most important of the danger factors, the black or dark colour of roads. That has been the fundamental cause of many an accident at night, and it is a perpetual source of strain and anxiety. The, declared opinion of the Ministry of Transport is that the ideal road must have a light, non-glaring surface. How long shall we have to wait before that is general?

NO ROBOT DOCTORS Major lan Hay Beith, in an inaugural address at the opening of the new year at the Westminster Hospital Medical School (University of London), spoke on "The Privileged Profession. He said that to-day human relationships were in the melting pot. The world was being dehumanised. The machine was taking the place of the man, or rather the man was being turned into a machine. There was a tendency toward a general standardisation of lifo. Most of us lived in hives. But perhaps that dull new world'of the future was not quite so imminent as some people thought. In all the movements toward mechanisation of life we were up against th,e most powerful opponent in the world—nature herself. Nature loved variety and contrast; she never made two human beings alike in history. If science and evolution were going to set out to flatten us all down to one'dead level, nature would have a word to say about it. There were already some symptoms of the reaction against mechanisation. The question arose as to how much the art of heal* mg was going to be affected by the mechanisation of human life and the reactions that must follow in its train. He thought mechanisation would make very little difference to the medical profession; less perhaps than in any other profession. One could not mechanise medicine or surgery. The domain of the doctor would be the last to be conquered by the robot. ROOT OF ITALIAN TROUBLE "The fundamentals of the present dispute with Italy are not in Abyssinia," asserted Lord Lothian in a recent address at Manchester. "The root of our difficulties to-day is the watertight compartmenting of the nations since the war. Before the war and immediately afterward 300,000 Italians left Italy for the United States every year, to say nothing of those who went to South America. There was substantial free trade during most of the last century in manufactured goods, in foodstuffs, in capital, and in the employment of people. After the war we suddenly cut off almost all those formß of movement. We cramped the nations, many of them with rapidly expanding populations, into countries that were narrow, unproductive, and with few natural resources. Italy perhaps is the most conspicuous of those countries, Japan is'another, and Germany will bo to-morrow, and there will probably be others. It is no use pretending that the tremendous problems of the sudden stoppage of world movement do not exist. They are there, and unless wo handle them firmly and wisely and in time thoy will explode in world war, whatever sanctions we create. It is the essential function of the League to deal with theso questions, otherwiso it will die, because wo have allowed it to become an instrument, not for settling grievances, but for perpetuating u status quo which is every year becoming more difficult to justify."