TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 19515, 15 May 1922, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Having investigated the question of the number of hours devoted each day to intellectual vrork, the Paris Academy of Medicine has passed a resolution that these should not exceed eight for children under 14 years. But the academy went farther than this. According to the British Medical Journal, it actually blessed “inattention” as a gift of nature whereby children might escape from a regime less healthy than that of prisoners. “Happily,” says this journal, “the child has a wonderful gift of inattention which allows him to shake himself free from all intellectual harness. He is believed to be in the class, but he is playing truant. His imagination laughs at regulations which impose the double torture of silence and immobility. Inhibition is his intellectual defence.” Discussing the subject, the medical correspondent of the London Times says that recent research work, both in America and Britain, has shown the paramount importance of sleep as a brain restorer or recharger.. But the overactive,, over worked brain does not get enough sleep. Its hours of sleep are eaten into by late work and early rising to go to school, and the sleep it does get is often troubled owing to work having been carried on until “bed time.” As one doctor put it, “the best thing that can happen to a modern boy is to be stupid—incorrigibly stupid—for then he will be left alone and allowed to grow up normally. If he shows a spark of cleverness, he will be driven like a hoipe.” This is an exaggeration, of course; yet it is the opinion of competent observers that “bright boys are too often victimised to make an honours sheet, and that stupid boys, who escape this trouble, frequently achieve much greater degree of success in afterlife. The probability would seem to be that normal children’s brains are not fit to take in the kind of mental food usually supplied to them. The bright boys are, perhaps, not quite normal. Thus, the so-called stupid schoolboy is really the “father of the man.” Long after his “brilliant” classmate has been “worked out,” he maintains his intellectual vigour. In that sense modern boys may well pray for the gift of stupidity. Lord Clifford (president of the Evolution Society), who will shortly leave for Australia anol New Zealand on a lecturing tour, has just published a new book, “The Evolution of Civilisation and Society,” in which he has attempted to trace a connected sequence of events from so distant a date as 600,000 B.C. Writing of the modern malts ages ©f econognic,

processes, he says; “You must choose between civilisation, with its drawbacks of increased poverty and highly’restricted amount of liberty on the one hand, or the semi-savage life of the unscientific farmer or shepherd, or else return to absolute savagery. How mapy years will have to elapse before the po&, who form the mass of the community, will recognise that the rich capitalist is his best friend and protector, and so learn to co-operate with instead of envying his superior, it is hard to say. The very wealthy classes are, in reality, the custodians of the nation’s wealth, of which they are only the nominal owners; in fact they are those who nationalise industries, and no imaginative plans of State ownership can ever be imbued with the ambition and enterprise that a nation attains under a capitalist system which combines the quality of individual interest with those of public welfare. . . Honour and wealth are the •rewards of perseverance; success is the reward of efficiency; inequality is the reward of prudence and economy, which constitutes superiority. . . The days are long past when every rod of ground maintained its man, for it is only by increased energy that life can be maintained under modern conditions. Science can only make the struggle for existence more complex, and the strain heavier, and the collapse from over-exertion more acute, so far as tLe wise and wealthy are concerned, and poverty more endurable so far as the masses are concerned. Remember wages only distribute employment; prices only increase or decrease supply and demand; money only retards and facilitates distribution and supply. Capital can alone increase population, comfort and the pleasure and enjoyment of a community—not of the individual who is burdened with its custody. Hereditary talents count for more than genius; humility makes hardship bearable. Human wisdom is the result of experience, not of education. Too much liberty destroys freedom. These are the lessons we learn from the evolution of civilisation, which is a long story of human folly, lost opportunities, wasted energy, and the abuse of natural gifts, to create war, strife, and hatred.”