A QUESTION OF PROPORTION.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 153, 28 June 1919, Page 6

A QUESTION OF PROPORTION.

During a discussion on tho teaching of history at this week's meeting of the Council of Education in Wellington, it was stated, in support of the contenj'tion that the Department itself was j largely to blame for the neglect of this j great subject, that for the intermediate examination the Department allotted it only 200 marks, but gave 300 to bookkeeping, and 400 to Maori. That the keeping of business books should apparently be considered a more valuable subject educationally than the story of man's triumphs and failures through the ages, will be to some people a good joke. It will 'be a better joke than the giving to the Maori language of double the marks allotted to history, for though Maori is only the tongue oi a savage and isolated people who had no written literature, at least it brings the student into contact with poetry and romance, and opens a door to the history of his own country and its surrounding ocean. But, of course, it all depends how you look _b education. If you want nothing more for your boy (or girl) than that he shall be a competent clerk, or plumber, or painter, or bootmaker, then you will naturally want " practical" subjects like bookkeeping, and plumbing, and painting, and 'bootmaking, exalted, and " fancy " subjects like literature and history kept in severe subjection. For, after all, what i 3 the use of a knowledge of 'history? Will it mend a broken water-pipe, or cause a merchant to one per cent to his profits, or enable a manufacturer to see more clearly week b%- week from his books what a very prosperous and therefore entirely -useful and admirable citizen ho is? Will it make a one-sheep-to-the-acre farm into a one-and-a-half-sheep-to-tho-acre farm? If it will not do these things, let us not study it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there are men interested in education who are not satisfied with this point of view, so the I Council of Education desires that more 1 attention shall be given to history in primary and secondary [schools. Its members believe that man does not live b3 T i business alone, and that the marvellous story of the world—the rise and fall of nations, all the tangled 'record of passion, ambition, heroism, suffering and aapiration, and conflict between man and nature ajid man and nun —is the child's priceless heritage. They believe with ' the Greek historian that history is ! philosophy teaching by examples. It ! will be interesting to see whether philosophy prevails over figures.