THE COUNTY BADGE SCHEME
SIR,—Now that the subject of the County Badge Scheme has once more become the object of discussion, I hope I may be excused for offering these views which are those of a boy still at school.
Although the insistence on the inter-dependence of physical and mental development is probably a healthy one, and although the educa- tional value of exercise needs to be more fully recognised, I cannot help deprecating the spirit in which Mr. Kurt Hahn. would like to see it carried out. Dr. Julian Huxley in 1,:s article mentions that it would avoid the uncritical athleticism of the English Public School, yet in no English Public School have I seen athletics carried to such extremes as at Gordonstoun, where cross-country runs are obligatory for all at least once a day (on top of the usual athletic activities) and where marks of distinction are worn by those who have respectively achieved the normal and the "gold " standard of the County Badge. Even if one could see eye to eye with Mr. Hahn on the methods of his scheme, one would still look askance at the award of badges—yet another example of bolstering up a good activity by sordid appeals to the most precarious side of a boy's nature.
The Scheme bears the character of its foreign origin—and it would indeed be surprising if it did not do so. Nobody in England and nobody conversant with the organic character of her evolution would wish to construct a comprehensive system which would be super-imposed upon rather than grow out of existing institutions. For what else is the mean- ing of a " Scheme "?
Meanwhile, the supporters of the County Badge Scheme might be interested to know that there exists a school where sport is not primarily the business of the over-specialised athlete, where a boy's discretion as well as his skill is trained by purely voluntary participation in athletic pursuits, and where a complex of other institutions exist to encourage the naturally timid and lay a basis for self-confidence, without inducing the competitive spirit on the one hand and the aloofness of the great
athlete on the other.—Yours, &c., UNWLN FLEMING. St. Pours School, Easthampstead Park, Wokingham, Berks.
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