Educational Reform Premium

The following are extracts from the welcome address delivered by the Chairman of the Reception Committee, Mr. R. Swaminatha, at the 14th session of the Madras Provincial Educational Conference held at Kumbakonom yesterday: In the existing schools of all states, the pupils should be taught to value health and manual labour and cultivate healthy independent thinking and a due sense of responsibility and duty by the State on the one side and by their own people on the other. What is really needed is increased attention to hygiene and increased insistence upon some useful form of hand and eye training being adopted in schools. The gymnastic instructors attached to schools must be instructed afresh in the laws of health and the several forms of recreation conducive to health, and given a better and more enlightened conception of their duties and responsibilities as physical directors in schools. It appears to me that in respect of education, it is not the scheme that matters so much as the men that have to carry out the scheme. If only the men in charge of it are of the right sort, any scheme however defective or ill-designed, may be thought to have a whole new effect and even a good scheme is bound to suffer in the hands of undesirable men.