AMERICAN EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 96, 18 January 1924, Page 13

AMERICAN EDUCATION

Sir,—Most people nowadays are aware that the Now Zealand Press is manifestly indulgent in giving pub; licity to opinions expressed by quasi educationists, oven when some oxponents of intellectualism submit for the edification of your readers’ sentiments that excite one’s visible faculties And after readmg . the achievement of Miss Valentine as set forth in vour issue this morning I am wondering what the incubator in charge of the Educational Department will hatch out next. W- are gravely informed that self expression is’ the keynote of American .education. Hence the precocious products that is out .of touch with that indefinable something that constitutes the real personality essential to good citizenship. I am inclined to think that our Wellington Mag’strate would advocate self repression instead of self expression, or “a good old fashioned thrashing” as an alternative in some cases. Then our interesting mentor tells us about the nine little children making speeches On the value of books. Poor little infant prodigies equipped with evils that tend to transform them into a condition of ' senile decay by the time thev reach the age of forty. Some people fail to realise that the mental activities should develop with the physical and that a sturdy ch’ld impervious to climatic influerices will often outstrip tHe hothouse plant in th© race of life. Is it not better for the youngest to engage sometimes in the manufacture of mud pies, instead of wasting his time on orator'cal displays? St. Paul said—according to. the revised version of the sacred writings —“When I was a chi’d I snake as a ch’ld. I felt as a child. I thought as child: now that I am become a man. I have nut away childish th’no-s. But J suppose one will be told that this is the vear 1924, and that America is a paradise of learning. There is a tendency in New Zealand to eulogise pseudo education at the risk of fostering a bodv of malcontents who will oventuaPv disturb the general community bv turning down pursuits at farming, or in the arts and crafts or eommoreiM enterprises. The State system of education is causing increasing disoiiiet in various oimrters. for t.be upkeep is based on indirect taxation, and accordinn- to a notable British statesman: “Indirect taxation is a direct robbery.”—l am, etc., W. B. FISHER. Wellington, January 14.