At the annual conference of educational associations meeting at University College, London, yesterday, Dr. George H. Green, Lecturer in the Department of Education in the University College of Wales, addressing the League of Nations Union Section, on the question on racial prejudice among children said that in Welsh schools in which an investigation had been carried out, the children at the age of seven had a stock of racial prejudice which presented unchanged throughout their school life. Between four and five thousand papers were distributed to elementary, central, and secondary schools. The outstanding result was that the children investigated, ranging in age from seven to 18, were prepared, almost without exception, to ascribe good and bad qualities to whole groups of people and to prefer people to others on the ground of their national or racial origin.
Dr. Green said that he felt sure, though he had no evidence of this, that the prejudice went on through the university years. Indeed, Professor Thorndike suggested to him last year that of he could test the members of the Ninth International Congress on Psychology, then meeting at Yale, he would obtain much the same results as he obtained with the children of the elementary schools of Wales.
There could be no doubt, Dr. Green said, that within a narrowly limited field the film had done a great deal to crystallise and make definite a whole body of dislike of aliens. Dislike of the German had been made definite by actual pictures of warfare which showed cruelty and cowardice. That was a direct result of the American war film. If children had an unfavourable opinion of, say, Spain, and considered that the Spaniards were cruel, in the cited the bull-ring and the Inquisition – as they had done in the test papers – it was useless for the teacher to assert that the Spaniard was neither cruel nor cowardly. What was to be aimed at was the building up of a stable attitude of a friendly character. The earliest step in education for international understanding was the leading of the child to the realisation of the economic unity of mankind.
Even men of science discourse on Nordic, Teutonic and Latin qualities with gusto, the “Daily Telegraph” writes in an editorial on the lecture to-day, and all such discussions, though they may be based on judiciously sifted data, are salted with prejudice. History has shown over and over again that sudden outbursts of international enmity have come from childish causes. It is useless to search too earnestly for particular antidotes. One or two were suggested yesterday, but they are not promising. To obtain freedom from this as from other prejudices is the great end of that self-knowledge to which all education should finally be directed.
The step from schoolboy to citizen is nowadays a short one, the “Manchester Guardian” comments in an editorial, and it is disquieting to envisage as does this inquiry the international attitude with which the young voter faces his responsibilities. Unreasoning dislike of the foreigner is one of the oldest and most evil of the forces that have animated mankind.
Sir Philip Hartog, Past President of the Friends of the Hebrew University, presided at the meeting of the English Education Section at the Conference.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
