EDUCATION (?)

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 229, 20 June 1908, Page 6

EDUCATION (?)

Sir,—May I take up a small portion of your valuablo .spaco for tl^o. purpose of airing what' appeal to mo as a very momentous question , concerning tho future of tho younger population of this country? I refer to tho matter'of oducation.

In my young days, and I am not so. very old now, Lreceived an education at tho hands of a State school which-fitted roe to go through lifo successfully, and any improvement that might be in my circumstances, is 'in no,way the fault of the oducation which I received.. That is to say. that I received a thorough grounding in the cloments of a sound education. But what do we find being taught to the rising generation of to-day ? A mass of subjects such as brush-work, plasticing, and a number of feminine monstrosities (I <do not refer to the teachers), which I make bold to say will have the effect of producing to us a nation of puling manhood which I hope I maiy not livo to see. Our girls who take up teaching are granted free passes from country schools to town. They go to town on Friday night and attend 'classes for an hour or two on Saturday morning, they have the' remainder of the time until the return journey commences to hang about town boardirighousoß and hotels or patronise questionable places of entertainment to, the detriment of thoir manners and that good old womanly modesty , with which contact with our'mothers of the old school has familiarised us. ' From what I can make of the matter, and I have thought it over carefully, tho present system of education is simply pandering to the secondary schools. Turn a lad out into tho world with a smattering of the .three R's and a dim idea of what tho word "Discipline" means, but with a thorough knowledge of how to make clay pigs and daub impossiblo pictures with (taring pigments, and what is tho result? No war veterans or Empire-builders there, .sir. Too lato then to turn and rend the benevolent Government for teaching'our young men the antithesis of manly, and useful accomplishments—l am, etc., ' / . , view.