HEALTH FIRST-CONCERN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19100, 22 August 1936, Page 14

HEALTH FIRST-CONCERN

SCHOOLS IN DOMINION VIEWS OF MINISTER SPEECH AT DANNEVIRKE (Vnr Press Association.) DANNEVIRKE, last night. "Health is the Bust concern, and the most important question for our children and their children, for they aro the adults of the future, is health," said the .Minister of Education, the Hon.- P. Eraser, when officially opening the new primary school jit Dannevirke this afternoon, winch he considered to bo one of the most modern and the finest in New Zealand. The Minister said it was most- important that children should be horn with a good constitution, born healthy, and that parents should have an adequate income to provide a good home with plenty of sunshine, fresh air and adequate and good food. One of the most important parts of education was physical education. He regretted that during the recent years of the depression, the question of physical training had fallen into the background. The money and effort spent on it had been greatly reduced, with a regrettable result, children going from primary to post-primary schools physically defective. A few weeks ago he had a very serious report laid before him in connection with the Wellington l'.oys' College, showing the unfortunate state of affairs that "boys entering it were, physically defective, mainly in posture. SUFFICIENT INSTRUCTORS "It will he one of our most impor- ' tant worries during the coming years," he said, "to see that there are sufficient, physical instructors appointed to go round the schools instructing .children : and directing teachers in the matter of physical education, because the more we spend in health services for the children the less will be spent, in endeavouring, some times hopelessly, to cure ill-health in grown-up people." The whole object of medical and health science at present, he continued, is to endeavour to keep people well. To do that, we must begin with the children. They had a good medical service that they were improving, and they were strengthening the school -medical service, getting more doctors and more nurses, because it . was found that with the present service, good its it was, they were not able to have doctors visiting some • schools nearly as often as they' might, and, sometimes indeed very rarely. He ,- hoped that within a period of fivo or J - '_. _ . ~.

six years, the average child in the primary school in the Dominion would receive dental treatment and attention.

There was developing in the Dominion, said the Minister, the principle of a new type of open-air school, which was a vast improvement on anything the country had hitherto had. There was no reason why New Zealand should not lead the world in education. Its system had some excellent features and some very bad ones, which the Government wanted to improve. NEGRO SPIRITUALS During the last few months, ho said, he had been surprised md gratified to come across some exceptionally good work in schools, and he instanced eases at a Dunedin school, where he found a teacher instructing standards V and VI in singing negro spirituals during the music • lesson, and then giving some of John Drinkwater's poems in a choral subject that simply took one's breath away, because he did not think music had attained such heights in primary schools. When that Wits reported in a number of instances, one could not help feeling proud of the work being carried on in tne schools, and realising the devotion and self-sacrifice of so many of the teachers. On n recent visit to the School for the Deaf at Sumner he had seen work that could not be excelled anywhere. When one saw work of that description, almost miraculous, one fetl that only a beginning had been made in understanding the-power of human being to help one another.

The Minister commented on the wonderful work being carried out in many of their schools, primary, special, intermediate, secondary and technical, and said they wanted the best in all departments of education, and they wanted parents to feel that the way of the child right from the kindergarten to the university was open.