The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 1927. A BELATED CONVERSION

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 12, 5 April 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 1927. A BELATED CONVERSION

THOSE who want peace in industry will say “Amen” to the pulpit declaration of a British moderate Labour leader that strife should be the last thought to come into men’s minds, not the first. But the harsh lessons of recent experience will urge most people to add at least a silent prayer that the sentiment represents sincerity. It is right, however, that even a belated conversion should be treated with respect and accepted as an expression of honesty. So let us take the new creed of Mr. Prank Hodges, secretary of the International Miners’ Federation, at its face value and as something entirely dissociated from hypocrisy. Last Sunday Mr. Hodges spoke from the pulpit of Coventry Cathedral to a congregation of two thousand men, including many miners. The influence of environment was strong upon him; so much so, indeed, that be became penitent in spirit and given to confession. He confessed his rejection of the idea that industrial strife was inevitable, admitted that the basis of Labcmr organisation hitherto had been belief in preparation for industrial war, welcomed the partial understanding in Labour’s ranks that war and barbaric strife were futile, and urged his fellow men to translate the desire for industrial peace into industrial practice on the ethical precepts of Christ Himself. As a Labour sermon Mr. Hodges’s declaration will touch the hearts of the woolly Conservatives, but will it go to the heads of Labour 1 ? It is to be feared that organised Labour will be more disposed to send Mr. Hodges to Coventry than to accept him as its new evangel. The mass of Labour in Great Britain, or in any other part of the Empire, has not yet seen the light that has converted the secretary of the International Miners’ Federation and caused him to repent its grievous sins. It is a striking commentary on the instability of Labour’s desire for industrial peace that even while Mr. Hodges stood on the stool of repentance another example of Labour’s folly was being staged in a distant part of the Empire. Twelve hundred employees of an engineering firm in Sydney had declared a strike for the most trivial of reasons—the alleged victimisation of a union delegate. Even though the delegate had been assassinated, there would have been no valid reason for disrupting an industry. The whole trouble throughout the British Empire labour to-day is its readiness to make the most of pettv grievances. No other country is subjected to the same brittleness of industry. Unless industrial peace be secured on a firm foundation, there can be no prosperity for the British worker. It will not be gained by the pulpit sentiment of isolated converts. What is wanted is a national passion for steady work. "SPARE THE ROD—!” SOLOMON is alleged to have said that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. Solomon is regarded by some people as the sage of all the ages, whose dictums are infallible, and among these people are some school teachers. Judging by the complaints of a number of parents, there are among the instructors of the potential Prime Ministers of this country those who follow too literally the Solomonic theory in implanting knowledge. But parents are peculiar people. Those who are readiest with the rod to their children are quickest to resent the use of it by the teacher. That is human nature, most strongly exemplified in kinship. The only persons who should inflict corporal punishment are parents or guardians. That is the opinion held by many. But some parents are notoriously lax in subjecting their children to discipline, and the boy who does practically as he pleases at home cannot be permitted to he indolent and impertinent at school. His parent cannot he there to punish him—and probably would not punish, him in any case. One rebellious boy can upset a whole class and render attempts at teaching a farce. If reasoning fails, what other means than that of the cane has the teacher by which to maintain discipline ? The Auckland Education Board holds that corporal punishment should be used as sparingly as possible ; that its frequent infliction in a school is to be accounted an indication of defective discipline; and that it should be limited to deliberate breaches of discipline and wilful faults. With this there should be general agreement; and also with the opinion expressed by the chairman of the board, Mr. A. Burns, that undue severity of caning is evidence of tutorial incompetence and that no child should be punished for beingunable (as distinct from being unwilling, it is presumed) to do its lessons. No teacher of sane temperament would use the cane unless it was thoroughly deserved. Fortunately the Squeers type has very few survivors, although there are still some teachers who are temperamentally unfitted to inflict corporal punishment, because in the excitement of caning they lose their restraint and often punish more severely than they intend. Teachers who have not the self-restraint necessary to prevent their resorting to the cane as the first and easiest way to brighten the mind of perplexed youth should be weeded* out of the service. Those who cuff children on the ears, thump their heads, or otherwise mishandle their charges, to the detriment alike of physical and mental health, should be prosecuted. But to say that a boy ought not to be caned under any circumstances is sheer sentimental nonsense.