77-4 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 



Diogenes. Inspectors are everywhere except in the Departments of 

 State. You haA'e seen, for instance, the inscription over a butcher's 

 shop. " All stock slaughtered under Government veterinary inspec- 

 tion." Now, that means that butchers are assumed to be too ignorant 

 or too dishonest to be trusted with the comparatively simple task of 

 supplying the public with meat. The milkman has to be watched, 

 and this sort of thing is too typical of our industrial and social life. 

 Our education is a failure if a pillar in society has the morals of the 

 Merry Monarch, if a prominent statesman would rather not pay his 

 debts, if a prominent citizen is the manufacturer of adulterated food. 

 You all know Arnold's sermon on the text, " Wragg is in custody." 

 Well, Wragg is still in custody, and how to keep her from going there 

 we hardly know. The problem of moral education is still to be 

 solved. The first essential, however, is to face, not to shelve it. 



Shall we take life as we find it, and warp and strain the nature 

 of youth to suit it, or shall we so endeavour to educate so that the 

 result will be seen in a better social life — a life that shall satisfy a 

 man's deepest needs and his best cravings, and which at the same 

 time will inspire him to do his utmost for the welfare of the com- 

 munity? 



The church hammers away at the adult with little effect. The 

 State has all it can do to keep him straight. Why not tiy to do more 

 with the child and the youth? He is plastic and mouldable, and 

 responsive to the best influences if only we can bring them to bear 

 at the right time and in the right way. I should have liked to touch 

 on the question of the education of girls, but there is no time. This 

 is not a medical congress, but I believe that if a doctor were here to 

 speak on the question he could tell a sorry tale about girls and 

 examinations. 



We are supposed to be beginning a new era in education, and 

 the flush of a new^ dawn is in the sky. But I submit w^e must know 

 clearly what we are to aim at, and how we are to get there. One of 

 the surest guides, I believe, in all sincerity, is an exact and complete 

 knowledge of the strange, interesting, and lovable creature — the little 

 child. 



8.— A PLEA FOE THE AUgTEALIAN CHILD BODY. 



By J. D. C. ELKIXGTON, M.D., D.P.H., Health Officer, Hobart. 



Over fifty years ago Mr. Herbert Spencer made a certain famous 

 classification of knowledges in terms of national value. He placed at 

 the head of the list the "self-protective knowledges as of most import- 

 ance to the individual and to the- race; then came the knowledge 

 relating to the preservation and perpetuation of infant life. Last in 

 order of value came the ornamental knowledges, the brain-decorative 

 accomplishments to which the meaning of Education is limited in the 

 minds of 99 per cent, of the public. Mr. Spencer took this classifi- 

 cation as a basis for a bitter criticism of the educational methods of 

 the day in English public schools. In following up the subject he 

 pointed out that a student in another star endeavouring to arrive at 

 an understanding of the British people in the nineteenth century from 

 a study of the books used during their systematic introduction to the 



