ENLIGHTENMENT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19989, 4 November 1927, Page 6

ENLIGHTENMENT

EDUCATING MOTHERS SOMETHING TOR ALL NEW ZEALAND “Here you have an institution of enormous importance,” said Sir Truby King, K.C.M.G., when he opened the Plunket Society’s new Mothercraft Home in Campbell Street yestendjay. * ‘ This is a definite educational institution,” he continued, “just as your schools and colleges, carrying enlghtenment far and near, not only by means of the nurses but also the mothers even if they come only for a day or so. They carry the story to others and tell what their experiences have been in the best way of all, one friend telling another.” Sir Truby related how in Duncdtn the young Scots wife of a university professor, who had attended the Plunket Society institution and, whose baby had been saved, convinced Mr Philip Snowden of the value of the Society when he had come to New Zealand strong in the belief that it did more harm than good by keeping alive babies who, he said would be better dead.

“A year or so of the life of every child is sacrificed to learning vulgar fractions, decimals, and all that arid stuff in every school,” concluded Sir Truby King, “but I think in the long run this will be found to be not the least of the educational institutions of the country. By acquiring this home you have done something not for Wanganui alone, but for all New Zealand. We are not separate countries now and if something good is done anywhere it travels all over the world.”