WOMEN’S PART

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20181, 25 June 1928, Page 9

WOMEN’S PART

TEACHERS OF CHILDREN THE TEMPERANCE ASPECT “Manhood and womanhood- together must make their contribution to national progress, but woman must leavn that she has a very definite contribution to make which none otlisr can make.” This pronouncement was made by Miss I. McCorkindale, Education Director of tho W.C.T.U. (Australia), to a meeting of women on % Friday. ,

Lady Astor had said, added the speaker, not that women would change the world but they could if they wanted to. Matthew Arnold had also expressed the opinion that if ever the world saw a time when women came together purely and simply for the benefit and good of mankind., it would be a power such as the world had never known.

Education was spoken of as though all that it implied was provided for by the Government in the schools of the Domnion, but it was of little value if what the child learned at school was contradicted by old fashioned ideas in the home. The woman was essentially the teacher. The woman of to-day owed it to the younger generation to acquaint them -with the fact.that would help them to think straight on great national questions, to teach them not only that it was, but why it was.

“The young people of to-day are not influenced by fear,’’ said Miss McCorkindjale. “It is the popular thing to believe that they are decadent, but I believe, after addressing over 120,000 in universities and colleges, that there never was a finer lot of young people in the history of the race. (Applause). I’m glad you agree with that. Let us work at some of our methods of teaching temperance, we have dwelt too much on the horror to be shunneG, rather than the ideal to which they should be urged.” There was no point of contact between child with its fresh young lite and the pathological conditions of alcoholism, continued the lecturer. But a child was keenly interested in the machinery of its own body. A child should learn to know some of the laws that governed his being and how alcohol, like the sand in the engine, hindered the physical machine from accomplishing its best. Teachers of those who would make the'customs and conventions if they failed were not true to their duty if they failed to become informed on the. effects of alcohol on the system so that those who followed would be guided by their knowledge of facts rather than the prejudice and ignorance of the past.