IS EDUCATION OVERDONE?

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 223, 8 June 1923, Page 5

IS EDUCATION OVERDONE?

REPLY TO “SELF-EDUCATED.”

Sir, —There are a few points in the letter of “Self-educated” in your issue of the sth instant that are worthy of reply with a view to the correction or some false ideas about education with which he is imbued. It would Le easy to gibe at “Self-educated” as being a typical example of that kind of “self-made man who adores Ins maker,” but he has evidently wr’tten from some kind of conviction, and his arguments are so much in line with a good deal of error in regard to eduoa-

tion that some reply is advisable. It appears from the “page from lus cwn log” that your correspondent has risen superior to many early difficulties and privations, and, in spite of them, has secured a teacher’s and other professional qualifications. AH bo.our to him: but what might he not have been capable of if he had had the cf portunities that are now d< sired for all those who are able to use them? And, though he had the grit ;nd perseverance, also perhaps a little good luck, to rise superior to his circumstances, there are many thousands of others endowed with perhaps equally valuable abilities who eannot give those abilities scope without ’.he training that a few years of education give. It will be worth while to consider a few of the phrases used by “Self-edu-cated.” Taking them more or less consecutively, we meet such ideas as this: “A ruinous rate to the taxpayer." This, Sir, is .‘•heer exaggeration. Has any taxpayer been even inconvenienced, much less ruined, by the expenditure on education? For many years N'ew Zealand has spent on an average less than a tenth part of its revenue on education, so it is clear that if there is anything ruinous about our taxation, it is not due to education. Would “Self-educated” rather spend his tax money on education or on police, on gaols, and on r-.lief of the poor? He must choose between the one kind of expenditure o’- the other. Which will he choose?

Again, “being spoon-fed with education . . .is not conducive to combining educational qualities with tone and staunch character.” It is not easy to tell exactly what this means, but if it means anything it means that education is bad for tone and staunch character, which is an exact denial of all the teachings of human experience.

“We want more of self-education.” In this your correspondent utters a profound truth, though, of a different kind from what he intended. All educationists, the world over, are demanding more opportunity for ■ the education of the self, the development of the individual, the growth of personal character. But that does not mean the kind of self-education that was in the mind of the writer of the letter. He goes on to say: “After all the true school of life is the world,” but he did not complete the unholy trinity by adding, “the flesh and the devil.” which is what his educational prescription would really mean for ninety-nine out of every hundred of those subjected to it. Not many have the good fortune to come through it as “Self-educated” seems to have done. Another phrase, “producing the leaning, dependent type.” Could anything be more opposite to the actual facts than the obvious deduction intended? Education, we are to believe, makes its victims lean and depend on others. If so. why did “Self-educat-ed” devote so much of his time and energy to securing his teacher’s and other professional qualifications? Why are so many hundreds of people in this city and all over, this Dominion spending their evenings in study after their day’s work if it is to turn them into the “leading and dependent types?’.’ The plain fact of all experience is that it is lack of education that makes men dependent. That is the want that has left them ignorant of thp qualities and abilities with which they are endowed, and condemns them, as soon as one occupation fails, to the ranks of the unemployed, and often unemployable That is the source of the greatest of all wastes, the waste of human brain and human will. The “glut of clerks, accountants and lawyers” is largely a myth, and the “dearth of manual workers and tradesmen’ 1 is due. to quite other causes than to education, but that is too big a subject for this letter. “Mons was fought by young men of 19 to 22 and less.” “Self-educated is quite wrong. The average age of the “Old Contemptible s” when they fought at Mons was 25. It was later in the war that the ninetgen-year-olds were called upon, and it was nothing but the training they had received in Ithe schools that enabled them so quickly to take up the special training that was required to make them efficient in the navy and the army. What was it but our relatively high standard of general education that enabled our men to be so quickly transformed into efficient and disciplined soldiers? “Self-educated’-must look for other arguments than that to support his case. After all. Sir, it is a question of what education is for. For us in New Zealand it is for the purpose of developing a community of intelligent people of (high principles who will be able to take their place as members of a self-governing democracy, with all the privileges and all the responsibilities that that implies, it those privileges could be maintained and those responsibilities properly discharged without education, then there would be some ground for what “Self-educated” has put forward. But all the lessons of past human experience show that he is wrong, and that so far from education being overdone it must be advanced to a much higher standard before New Zgaland and the people of New Zealand can show the world what she and her people are capable ‘’f- I H am > A fitc i ; AßKlNS oN Secretary, N.Z.E.I. June 6, 1923.