RELIGIOUS READING

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 188, 17 August 1935, Page 7

RELIGIOUS READING

FOR THE SABBATH THE GLUTTED EARTH Dear People, Upon the distinguishing methods adopted to cope with any specific national problem during any particular period may be based a fairly accurate estimate of the level of thought attained at that time. We of the twentieth century may at any rate congratulate ourselves upon having discarded to some extent the old rule-of-thumb methods prevalent in

many branches of public affairs in the past, and upon having attained a degree of wisdom surpassing that (for instance of King David of Scotland who in 1150 A.D. ordained that the Scottish inch should be the mean measure of the thumbs of three men, —“an markle man, an man of measurable stature and an lyttel man.” In the realm of child-culture, however, many quaint old rule-of-thumb methods are still in vogue. If a child is well enough to eat and to sleep and to play; if he is not ailing sufficiently to feel unhappy about himself, he is looked upon as fit and well. Such a child may constitute a neglected unit of the 20,000 New Zealand children who suffer from malnutrition; he may be one of the 34,000 goitrous children at present attending our schools; he may constitute an insignificant link in the chain (25,000 children strong) of sufferers from enlarged tonsils; or he may form part of that band of 40,000 New Zealand youngsters who are afflicted with dental caries. “He is doing well enough,” says old rule-of-tbu.mb. “Let him be!” Consistent fidelity to rule-of-thumb methods in connection with the health of children on the part both of parents and of the country in general will infallibly produce a glutting of our own portion of the earth’s surface by a surfeit of physically and mentally backward children of whom, in some five years’ time, between 70,000 and 100,000 will be definitely

goitrous. In its School Medical Service, New Zealand possesses one of the finest instruments yet evolved for the care of the health of children. Its director, together with its permanent staff of ten school medical officers and

twenty-six school nurses ensures three complete physical examinations per annum to each and every school-child in the Dominion. It is per medium of our excellent school medical service that innumerable concealed causes of ill-health and disability in childhood are unveiled and revealed but not always eliminated. The weak point of our present system is that it possesses insufficient authority for safeguarding and rescuing its “cases” from inattention to and neglfict of its expert diagnoses and recommendations. Particularly in recent years, parents have found themselves unable, for reasons of finance, to give attention to the warnings of the school medical staff in respect of the physical shortcomings of their children. The powers of school clinics must include not only the fullest enquiry into but

also the most effectual action in respect of nutrition, teeth, eyesight and other important aspects of the general health of children; and all this must be done on a national scale and at the nation’s expense, if we are to maintain our reputation for thinking in terms of democracy and equality of opportunity. So far as the future of the race is concerned: it has already become more than necessary in New Zealand to abandon the pseudo-commercial appraisal of health problems; it has already become more than necessary to adopt the only true and sincere attitude, that every little child is to be valued as an individual unit of potential spiritual wealth. Not any amount of money, however large; not any amount of time, however valuable; not any amount of care and attention, however exacting, can ever be too great for dedication to the scientific and systematic rearing of the next generation—that great edifice which it is our responsibility and our privilege to raise to the glory of God.