A wise man who addressed a a group of university students in America was asked for his favourite subject at school. The answer was: "Avoiding unnecessary work." That wise man was evidently not from our Education Department because unnecessary work is the cornerstone of our entire educational system, making nervous wrecks of an innocent population.

When we were school children we had the time to learn not only from books but also from nature. In fact we learnt more from nature. Today, a child gets up before the birds, carries a sackful of books heavy enough to deform a healthy spine and reaches the school gates panting. He is half-starved, half-asleep and in any case, suffering from malnutrition. After a quick bite he will rush to the private tutor who has to explain the many books he carried to school. Children don’t wear gas masks. So they continuously breathe the poisonous vehicle fumes emitted by the slow-moving traffic on our narrow roads built by the British when we had hardly any power-driven vehicles.

Many studies have indicated that slow poisoning with lead in children due to the ingestion or inhalation of small quantities of lead over long periods maybe responsible for a much larger proportion of mental retardation than has been realised so far.

Very much higher levels of lead in the blood have been found in mental defectives than in normal children. Household paints and petrol fumes are the usual sources that lead to poisoning of the tissues, especially of the child’s brain.

It has also been observed that the average school child or varsity student is mentally inferior to their predecessors. A serious study of the rowdy behaviour in our universities necessitating even police posts in the premises may show that mental retardation is the main cause. Perhaps the only hope is in realising the bitter truth that the intellectually inferior reproduce so much faster than the more highly endowed. Family planning is discouraged by organised faiths; they want more people in their flock, however mentally defective. There maybe marriage among close relatives to prevent the passing oil private property to outsides is an added cause for mental retardation.