MEANS OF AVOIDING WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 72, Issue 6240, 10 June 1946, Page 3

MEANS OF AVOIDING WAR

UNITED NATIONS CHARTER YOUTH WILL CARRY THE TORCH “Now we have come victorious through the recent world war we must never fail in bringing a lasting peace to the world,” declared Mr G. Roscoe, principal of the Paeroa High School, addressing the annual meeting of the Morrinsville Rotary Club. “We must stay on the road of international law and order,” he added, “and we will he helped in this by recognising and accepting the United Nations Charter —a charter accepted by over 50 peaceloving nations in the world.” Every man, woman, boy or girl must understand the fundamental purposes and methods of the charter as a means of avoiding war, and the consequences of failure. The path the nations would follow would depend on their people’s love of peace, mutual understanding, honesty, of purpose, and determination to uphold the right. The question arose, how could teachers, through the education system, assist in developing in the child an understanding and tolerance of the people of the world, irrespective of race, colour or creed? Unto the schools each year was admitted about 30,000 five or six-year-old children, and it was without doubt these children, together with others in the schools, would bear the torch that was flung to them. No two children were alike physically or intellectually, the boys and girls coming from homes where there were different environments arid where conditions varied very considerably. The child of the professional man associated freely with the son of the labourer, and social differences did not, or should 1 not, exist in the schools. “What a wonderful advance would be made in our social relations if those differences did not exist in our later life,” added Mr Roscoe.

Strangely, these children were but clay in the hands of teachers, although parents—in at least some instances—were but clay in the hands of their children. The latter were impressionable, were capable of assimilating knowledge easily, so was not the time opportune for dealing intelligently with them and developing in them the spirit of international understanding and tolerance? Continuing, Mr Roscoe said boys and girls must be taught that no section of the community was independent of the other. Work, and the value of that work in the industrial, social and ethical life of the nation, was the main thing. No nation and no man could build a fence about himself with impunity. If he did, he became the centre of an ever-diminishing circle of friends.

Mr Roscoe maintained that in the school a true democracy must be developed, in which the child must be encouraged to think for himself, reason for himself and express himself. A mass-minded adult was shallow minded; his knowledge was scanty and his power of disciplined thought scantier still. His feelings were easily swayed and in times of crisis he swung between contradictory extremes. A socially-minded adult who had been brought up to have a sense of oneness with his fellows in group or community was intelligent, informed and responsible. He did not drift; he gave allegiance.

Having given the child reasonable freedom of thought and of action it then became a duty to devise ways and means of developing in him a love of his fellow men and a tolerance of all peoples of the earth, added Mr Roscoe. Geography, because of its warmth and sympathy, tempered by dispassionate accuracy, was well fitted for the promotion of goodwill throughout the world. The fair and sympathetic study of other peoples and their problems was the most valuable part of training in world fellowship given in the schools. The subjects of history and vicics lent themselves to the spirit of internationalism. Extensive libraries must be established in the schools—libraries which not only 'contained books of fiction, but books on international relations, weekly news reviews, foreign bulletins and current newspapers. The child’s reading of such books and papers made him more conversant with other parts of the world, and assisted in developing in him an interest in foreign nations, together with a respect and tolerance for them.