From the Mailbag

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20126, 20 April 1928, Page 6

From the Mailbag

SCHOOL METHOD Sir, —Tn recording a conversation which was shared the other day by several ex very much ex—pupils of Wanganui schools, 1 am encourage,! by the reflection that it is a human foible almost universal to love to exchange school-day reminiscences. I give tie essence of the conversation:— First “ex—Poor old F was strapped again to-day for not being able to do her sums. Second ditto: What! You don't mean to say that they are still strapping kids for not being able to do their work? First (< ex— ,f : Y’es, it amounts to that. Second ditto: I thought that particular piece of barbarism had been pitched overboard Jong ago. When I was at school I was whacked because I couldn’t do arithmetic, and I’ve been a failure at it ever since. The third “ex” here chips in: Yes, an£ when I was at school I was always strapped for spelling. I couldn't spell then, and I can’t now. All their strapping couldn’t teach me whether you spell “receive” with a double “c” or an ‘ ‘ ea. ’ ’ Second “i?x”: Well, don't you see it’s because the particular subject is so wrapped round in the child’s mind with fear am] avoidance? It makes him grow up with a fear complex, or an insJiility complex, about that particular subject. I imagine if anybody had ever taken the trouble to givo me an interest in arithmetic .... .but one never knows, with a dud; and anywav strapping’s so much quicker and easier. Now, sir, being much interested in schools, in the psychology of the teacher as well as of the child, I have been emboldened to intrude upon the space of your paper in the hope o f reaching opinions of some of Wanganui’s numerous, and in most cases deeply thoughtful, readers on the subject of fear as an educator. CURIOUS. Wanganui, April .19.

IBERIANS AND ARYANS

My critic ‘‘Cloncxan” opposes what he terms an entirely new theorv of the origin of the British peoples, viz: that our remote ancestors were Aryans and Iberians. The theory is not so new as he imagines it to bo. It. has the support of many able scientists like Cuno, Dawkins, Muller, and Canon. Isaac Taylor, the latter having summed up the evidence in ‘‘The Origin of the Aryans” (Comparative Science scries). “Cloncvan” denies straightout that there is any evidence of the Iberians ever having a footing in the British Isles. Canon Taylor in his work gives conclusive evidence that they’ were discovered both from the Iberian type of skulls—many’ hundreds of specimens were taken from the long barrows (ancient burial grounds) and other evidence relative to the small dark-eyed race that inhabited ‘ British Isles long before the Celts invaded the country, and whose descendants were classed even by Tacitus as Iberians. The descendants of such are still represented in the Highlands by certain clans, the Frasers for instance and the dark-eyed Welsh and many of the Irish people. “Clonevan” denies that there was an Aryian race. Taylor uses the term right through his ’"ork and with C.uno holds that they inhabited the great, plain that stretches from the Ural Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean; that they were very numerous and roamed over the great plains for some thousands of years; and that they’ originated from the cavemen of Europe. ‘‘Clonevan’’ says that the Basque people have, no language. Taylor says that they have and that their language is veryancient. According to Taylor both the. Teutons and the Celts are branches originating from the original Aryan stock. “Clonevan” asks me if 1 am not confounding ‘ho Celts with the Iberians. Not in the least, as Taylor makes that difference quite clear, giving illustrations comparative of their respective types of skulls, the Iberian being long-headed and th»‘ Celtic type broad-headed. The distinction is most marked and convincing. “Clonevan” advanced no evidence that impugns the scientific view of the origin of the Indo-European peoples. A blunt denial of the existence of the Aryan race or stock four or five thousand years ago does not prove that they’ did not exist. Let me commend to his notice the following excerpt from Taylor's great work:—“The geographical .entre of human history has now been shifted from the East to the West. The earliest existing documents for the history of mankind come not from Asia, but from Western Europe. The most ancient records are no longer the slabs of writing disinterred from Babylonian, mounds, but the immeasurably older memorials of successful hunts, preserved in the caverns of the Dordogne, which were inscribed by the contemporaries of the mammoth on the bones and tusks of extinct anmals, compared with which the records on Baby’lonian tablets, or in Egyptian tombs, much more the traditions preserved in the Avesta, are altogether modern. . . The science of linguistic archaeology takes us back to a period older than all written records, to an age before the invention of writing or the discovery of metals, when the first rude plough was r. crooked bough, and the first ship propelled by poles.” “Clonevan” should by this time be prepared to appreciate the following passage from H. G. Wells’ ‘‘Outline of History” book IV., chapter 19 on the Aryans: “Before the expansion of the Aryans from their lands of origin southward and eastward the Iberian race was distributed over Great Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, North Africa, and South Italy and in a more civilized state, in Greece and Asia Minor, it was closely related to the Egvptian.” STUDENT OF HISTORY. Wanganui, March. 18. This correspondence is now closed.— Ed. “Chronicle.”