WHITE CHILDREN'S BURDENS.

Observer, Volume XXVIII, Issue 27, 21 March 1908, Page 2

WHITE CHILDREN'S BURDENS.

What They Are Leading to.

SOMETHING will have to be done before long to lighten the burdens

of the school children of the Dominion. This statement is not meant to be interpreted in any metaphorical sense. It refers simply to the physical loads which growing boys and girls can be seen eveiy day carrying through the streets, on their way to and from school. Probably it could also be applied to the educational carriculum itself, for a system which began with the " three r's " has expanded itself into an unwieldy syllabus grievous to be borne. But at the present moment we are chiefly con.cerned with a practice which tends to bring about deformities that may have lasting effects upon the physical interests of the unborn millions for whom one of New Zealand's statesmen used to plead so eloquently.

For evidence as to the existence of the evil it is only necessary to observe the groups of youngsters who throng the streets just before and after school hours. Chiefly, it applies to the students at the sscondary schools. Nearly every boy who attends these academies of learning staggers to and from his home with a bagful of textbooks and exercise books that makes him bow his back like a hod-carrier. The high-school boy's stoop has become as pronounced a feature of street deportment as was the cyclist's stoop a little while ago. The girls do not escape the infliction of burden carrying, but they wear it with a difference. Usually the school girl has as heavy a load as her brother, but she hangs it on one shoulder, producing a droop that is certainly not graceful, and has nothing else to recommend it.

In regard to either class the effectß cannot be other than harmful. Nature never intended immature young shoulders and backs to carry heavy and illbalanced loads, and people who fly in the face of nature are bound to have a heavy reckoning to pay sooner or later. The acquirement of malformed backs and sloping shoulders is an immediate danger to the present generation, and the passing on of such characteristics to the future is not pleasant to contemplate. The management of the schools have a responsibility beyond the mere cramming of their young charges with knowledge, and they should look to it that their methods are not responsible for physical damage for which no amount of book-learning will be adequate compensation.

The necessity for the daily portage of so huge a pile of books is said to spring from an insufficiency of equipment in the schools themselves. Certainly, no single evening's home study can require reference to half the books that each youngster takes in his or her portable library. If it did, the home work system would be ridiculously and unbearably overdone. But it appears that for want of proper provision in the school desks for the secure and orderly keeping of books, each student is required to keep personal possession of his full stock, and carry them backwards and forwards between school and home. And it is this deficiency of accommodation that is threatening so many of our young people with " Bible backs " and three cornered figures.

In other directions the educators of youth show praiseworthy interest in the well-b°ing of their charges. That they should concern themselves with breathing exercises, and calisthenics, and drill, and playground athletics, and yet overlook provision against a physical danger that is a direct outcome of their own system, is rather a curious anomaly. However, of its existence there can be no doubt. The remedy is, of course, chiefly a question of expense, but that should not be a matter difficult of adjustment between fichool managers and parents.