Letters to the Editor
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our "News of the Week" paragraphs.—Ed-. THE SraeraToal
SCHOOLS AS A NUISANCE
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,-1 should like to associate myself with the public interest in the serious situation arising out of the injunction recently granted in the High Court, to restrain Miss Tudor-Hart from allowing the children in her nursery school to disturb the neighbours by noise. A Committee of parents and educationists is making an effort to raise a Bind to enable Miss Tudor-Hart to appeal against the verdict, or alternatively to carry on the school elsewhere. The Nursery School Association has also opened a fund for the same purpose. I should like to draw further attention to some general bearings of the granting of this injunction.
It is clear that there are far bigger issues at stake than the disturbance of the quiet of one or two neighbours, for what is, after all, but a short part of each day. It has already been pointed out that we all of us tolerate a vast amount of continuous and highly disagreeable noise in modern life. A great deal of this noise is not only useless but unnecessary. The shouting and singing, and even the occasional quarrelling and crying, of little children in any community are very far from unnecessary. They are an integral and essential phenomenon of their proper education, and an index of vigorous bodily health and normal social activity. It is the considered opinion of experienced educators, here, in America and on the Continent, that children of these ages need the opportunity to run and shout in healthy play, for the sake both of their physical and of their social develop- ment. This view of their early education is fully substantiated by the scientific study of child psychology.
It would be a grave outcome of this case if nursery schools running on informed lines were to be hampered or suppressed, whilst an only too large number of inferior private " schools" for young children remain, which are carried on in cramped and ill-ventilated spaces, by unqualified people with no knowledge of modern child hygiene or methods of education. Many of these schools are indeed a public nuisance, since they menace the health and happiness of the children they purport to teach. What is now needed is not only that Miss Tudor-Hart should be enabled to carry on her excellent work, and that the parents who have had the good judgement to send their children to her school should be supported, but also that the right of young children to a serious education based on the scientific study of child hygiene should be fully vindi-
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