NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23162, 7 October 1938, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SMALLER SCHOOL CLASSES The importance of reducing the size of classes in schools was stressed by Sir Percy Harris, M.P., in a recent speech. "I would even go as far as to say chat smaller classes are more important than the raising-of the school leaving age," ho said, "for the small class with personal contact and individual attention is vital in education to-day, especially when there is such danger of the mass mind being created. Teachers are find-

ing themselves in daily competition with the mass influences of broadcasting and the cinema. To-day once a child is out of school the big influences on his mind and character are what ho hears over the wireless, and his heroes are the people lie sees on the cinema screen. If you are to avoid the mass mind and crowd thought, every teacher must encourage individual thinking and personal initiative among children at a very early ago." HERITAGE FROM GREEKS "We in Western Europe are in one sense the children of the ancient Greeks: in literature, in art, in thought, in science, in ethics and, more than people realise, in religion," said Professor Gilbert Murray in a recent broadcast talk. "In another way we are at the opposite pole to them. Ours is a material civilisation: the greatest material civilisation there has ever been, an age of elaborate possessions and inventions, an age of machinery, of economic complexity and of terrific governmental strength. Greek civilisation was just the opposite. No Greek community was at all comparable, I won't say to us, but either to Rome or to the great River Civilisations of Egypt or Babylon in any of those qualities—size, population, wealth, material splendour, military force or steady permanence. The thing ca'lled 'Hellenism' depended not on these things, but on a fineness of human quality."

i LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE "The German philosopher Hegel said a great many interesting and important things. One of the truest of them was this: 'We all say that we must study history, but the only thing that the study of history shows is that man ' has learned nothing from the study i of history,' " said Dr. Nicholas Butler, ■ president of Columbia University, speaking in London. "Man persists ; in repeating over and over again the , old mistakes and blunders, and he cherishes the hope that in some mysterious fashion the natural working of great forces in the past is going, under his observation and in his presence, to bo entirely altered for the benefit of himself and his contemporaries. Our inability to learn from history and to make the policies of to-day and to-mor-row the result of a knowledge of human experience in like fields in the past—that is one of the most important ills with which this generation is faced. We must find some way to cure it." NAZI WAY WITH BACHELORS The other day, in Germany, I met a man who was worried because of an official notice he had received, writes Mr. Edward Fuller in the Listener. It was not a demand for payment of overdue taxes; he was too well off for that worry. It was not a summons to military training; he was past the ago for that. But these.'two facts—that he was comfortably off and of mature age—had caused the authorities to send him a demand of another sort. They wanted him to get married. He preferred to wait until "Miss Right" camo along, but the officials took a different view. They held that, since he was a healthy citizen, who could well afford the responsibilities of family life, my friend was neglecting his duty to the' State by remaining a bachelor. Now it may. seem rather odd to us that a Government should claim the right to intrude into | what we prefer to think'of as "affairs of the heart"; but wo must face the fact that Governments of ail sorts — whether we know them as dictatorships or as democracies—are indeed - interfering in our private lives, and havo been doing so in increasing degree for more than a generation past, and we patiently accept it. If they begin to say when—and, perhaps, whom—tbeir citizens shall marry, ihey will only be following a well-worn track. Indeed, in itself, the <idea is not a new one; the Spartans are said to have employed it nearly 30 centuries ago, and frankly admitted that—in the words of their law-giver Lycurgus—children were not so much the property of their parent* as of tho Stato.

HOURS OF WORKING WEEK The French experience is instructive,points out the Yorkshire Observer, in discussing the decision of the French Premier, M. Daladier, to modify the 40-hour week. Whereas in 1930 less than 1 per cent of the workers had a 40-hour week, in May, 1937, tho figure had risen to 91.5 per cent, sinco when it has slowly. declined, until in March last it stood at 79.5 per cent. Unfortunately, tho change to the shorter working week has not resulted in more employment, for according to tho figures for the first quarter of this year there were only 81 per cent of the number in work that were employed in Franco in 1930, and tho hours of work had dropped to 66.1 per cent of tho total at tho same period when the 48-hour week opei-ated. In Britain thero wcro 1,500,000 more persons employed at tho beginning of this year than there woro in 1930. AVagcs have also had their effect, for taking tho index figure in Franco in 1930 as 100, tho rato for miners in March last stood at ( l33, and for skilled workers generally tho rato at tho end of last year was 123. Tho ,cost of living rose to 115, hut tho net effect of these changes, as M. JDaladior pointed out, was to handicap French manufacturers in tho international market. According to tho most recent figures, tho Gorman working day averages 7.86 hours, that of Hungary 8.77 hours, and in Japan it is as high as 9.97 hours. In Italy 50.7 per cent, of tho industrial population work from 40 to 45 hours a week, 20 per cent work from 45 to 48 hours, and 7.7 per cent, work for more than 48 hours a week. Tho policy adopted in Britain of taking industry by industry and seeing how rar tho hours of work can bo reduced by agreement between thoso most intimately concerned is the more practical. Tho oxperienco of France should encourage thoso concerned in the knowledge that more lasting results will follow than would bo secured by resort to more spectacular* but less stable methods*