Child life and labour / by Margaret Alden.

  • Alden, Margaret (Margaret Pearse)
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Child life and labour / by Margaret Alden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/200 (page 46)
    and leave the parent free to work. In poor districts there is a demand for creches, day nur- series, infant schools, Kindergarten, all of which are maintained either at the public expense or by private charity, and serve the purpose of rescuing the children from a home in which they must suffer neglect. The ideal is, of course, that the mother should stay at home and look after her children, and that for the greater part of the day they should be in the fresh air, developing their limbs and their powers of observation. Where this is impossible, special steps must be taken to see that the children are cared for, and that whatever education they receive is adapted - to their needs and capacities. If the infant’s school is only a glorified nursery, there can be little objection to it; in fact, it may be a very great advantage to the children ; but local authori- ties do not always take a sane view of their duty to the infant. Quite recently the whole question of the age at which the child should attend school has been revived, owing to the enormous cost of supplying the necessary school accommodation and providing the requisite teachers. Many of these children under five years of age have been pressed into the service of the local authorities by the attendance officers, who include them in the returns to the Board of Education. Whatever financial benefit may accrue from large and regular attendance at school, it must in the end cost the local authority more than it really gains, and it is to be hoped that the practice of encouraging mothers to send their babies to school will cease, and that for all children under five we shall frankly surrender any idea of education in the ordinary sense. The recommendation of the Committee