To Whom Is Honour Due?

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29760, 1 March 1962, Page 10

To Whom Is Honour Due?

[Specially written for “The Press” by PRACTITIONER]

She was an approachable young colleague and, when she appeared in the staffroom wearing a blazer adorned by a badge from which hung a number of small brass plates, was quite willing to explain their significance to me. The first honour bar was for playing basketball for her college, the second for having been a swimming representative, the third for some other athletic ability, and so on down to the end of the collection. Amused to note that she wore no badge given for any mental accomplishment, I remarked: “Oh, I have a string of those too.” “Have you?” she inquired with some interest. “What for?” “Well," said I, “there’s one for my matriculation, another for a teaching certificate, and another for a degree, also a special clasp for educational writing, and I hear that the teachers' union is to give me an award for outstanding independence of outlook. Why, if I wore all my honours, you couldn't tell my chest from that of Mountbatten or Voroshilov.” “Go on!” she said. And that was about all she could say, because we both knew that academic honours are seldom put on show in “lil ole Noo Zeelun,” but are usually kept in cardboard tubes on the top shelves of cupboards for spiders to nest in. Cups That Cheer As an observer of the primary education scene, I get thoroughly tired of seeing trophies, shields and medals presented to those with welltrained muscles, while those with well-trained minds usually get nothing. I suppose it’s just part of the strategy to reduce our national status by lulling the mindless into believing that we lead the world. So, at the year's end, the athletes and swimmers strut proudly forth to the accompaniment of trumpet fanfares and the occasional clang of a brandished cup that has fallen from its plinth, while the quieter types who have earned top class marks—unless they chance to combine brain and beef—are quietly ushered out a back entrance, so that their natural (in N.Z.) shame at their disgraceful performance may be endured in comparative privacy. Lost Talent It is the fault of all of us that, in a few years, many of this second group (equipped with degrees, fellowships and doctorates) will be just as quietly boarding aircraft for overseas, never to return. We nearly always get our muscle men back with a flicker of flashbulbs and much publicity, but once our brain men, and women, depart they usually go for good. The shadows of ignorance •re deepening about our country. Recently, in a radio store, when we remarked that it was a pity that a certain £5O worth of assorted timber, containing a handful

I of radio parts lacked short wave bands, the young and beautifully-dressed salesman looked at us scornfully. “Short wave is out,” he said. “No, friend,” I thought, “Its you that’s out. Out of this world. More than a hundred countries give newscasts in English, but you’ll never hear them.” But as he had all the brassy self-assurance that characterises the young, even all too often in my own line of work, we said nothing, but smiled and left. Time deflates all balloons. Brown On Video During recent weeks we have all watched strongnerved men (both in their racing cars and out), heard some of their views, and we have seen top athletes shav. ing seconds off records, but when can we expect to see interveiwed on our screens those youngsters who topped the school certificate and university scholarship lists? Surely those who control our latest medium of instruction and entertainment are not going to show us only the overseas intellectuals. Let them boost the local youngsters with brains now and again. And you organisers of inter-school contests for primary pupils: what about a

speech-making contest, or an arithmetic or spelling competition? The rounders standard of your school may be high; but what about tables and grammer? Would you win a cup for them? Well, educationists and others, among the poets on your bookshelf, you will have one who exclaims in a burst of revulsion; “I to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains . . .” Do you realise that we have now sunk so low that most of our fellow-citizens would agree if told that a Latin root was an Italian vegetable and a prefix a newly developed glue? For the sake of our pupils’ coming secondary education, let us, in the elementary schools, blow away the smoke-screens of pseudopsychological nonsense and of muscle-worship, and get down to the job of teaching the children something. And if anyone wishes to give a prize, give it for some academic attainment. Unless we encourage and give honour to our clever children, and gear the salary scales to their ultimate advantage, we will be mentally overwhelmed, and later physically taken over, by other more rapidly developing nations.