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This outlook should influence the whole of their education.
Scholarship, as something different from education, is not of
primary importance, and moreover, whereas the normal child at
fourteen has a plastic mind and is still on the threshold of life
mentally, the dull child at fourteen is a finished product.
(19) NURSERY SCHOOLS.
There are no nursery schools in the district.
On the 5th December, 1929, the Ministry of Health and the
Board of Education sent out a circular on the question of nursery
schools.
They say in the third paragraph of this circular that " many
small children cannot get personal attention where the home is
squalid, where food is bad and insufficient, where the only playroom
is the gutter, and where ill-health passes unnoticed till chest
trouble, rickets or other ailments have developed. These conditions,
prevalent in parts of all our cities, cry aloud for attention."
My own opinion is that nursery schools could be tried in a
limited way as an experiment if and when the money is available,
particularly in those parts of the town where there is most need,
but I do feel that the real problem rests in the home and that no
case has been made out for nursery schools until more intensive
use has been made of the Maternity and Child Welfare organisation,
which has done so much for the children during the first and second
years of life and which could do much more for the children up to
the age of five if more money and consequently a more comprehensive
service were available.
The Maternity and Child Welfare Service tends to call attention
to environment and facts which require social measures for their
alleviation. Taking children out of the home rather tends to hide
these environmental difficulties.
(20) SECONDARY SCHOOLS.
Once again I want to point out how invidious it is for children
leaving your ordinary elementary schools to proceed to a higher