The influence on national life of military training in schools : [an address delivered before the Medical Officers of Schools, Thursday, February 15, 1906] / by T.C. Horsfall.

  • Thomas Coglan Horsfall
Date:
[1906?]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence on national life of military training in schools : [an address delivered before the Medical Officers of Schools, Thursday, February 15, 1906] / by T.C. Horsfall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    as possible, the boys born of them must have some special treatment to make good the loss of the civic training of home and to counteract that of membership of a society whose needs differ much from those of a normal community. We know, too, that in a large proportion of the homes of the children who go to our public elementary schools, the struggle for daily bread, and too often, also, the influence of the daily beer, prevent the parents from forming any strong and intelligent conception of duty to the community in which their children can participate. If, then, most of the children attending elementary schools are to feel a desire to live the lives of useful citizens, they too must receive some special training at school. The training needed must be comprehensive ; it must in¬ clude some instruction respecting duty towards our neighbour and duty towards the mass of our neighbours—our country; but it must include much more than instruction given in words, which cannot influence the average child very strongly. Such instruction must be accompanied by action which the child knowTs to be intended to fit him for the doing of things, the usefulness of which he can understand at least partly. So far as instruction respecting duty to neighbours is concerned, something is already clone in many schools, and a good deal is done in some schools ; but I do not think that duty towards the country as a whole is taught with sufficient clearness in many schools of any grade. Our English shyness, our reluctance to speak to anyone about the subjects which we believe to be most important, and the great difficulty which we most of us find in speaking to children about such subjects, owing to our belief that we may do harm and not good—-this feeling, which is so common in English people, too often prevents children from receiving the instruction, the advice, which to many of them would make all the difference between noble and ignoble life. We know that the reluctance of parents and teachers to give young people necessary information respecting the relations of the sexes often has the worst results. I believe that failure to tell children of the duty of each of them towards his country is also very harmful. Of course, the giving of such instruction must be guided by good sense and tact. Mr. Kipling, in “ Stalkey & Co.,” gives us an example of how not to do it in the address of his offensive M.P., who, if I remember rightly, waves the country’s banner in the face of reticent English lads. Exaggeration and all other forms of insincerity must be carefully avoided, or boys will be made to regard as
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