ALAS FOR LATIN!

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 23, 28 January 1911, Page 11

ALAS FOR LATIN!

+_ WHEN THE "PRACTICAL MAN" SPEAKS. IS EDUCATION A HINDRANCE? UNIVERSITY MEN ARRAIGNED. (By "Arabibus.") • Ib was in the Legislative Assembly of West Australia, last Thursday, and a Labour member, Mr. Underwood, was speaking on a University Bill. "Teaching the classics and music is waste," said Mr. Underwood. "We don't want Latin 1 , and there's nothing in Plato. University men are always in the rear, and it's easier for a porcupine to go backwards through a canvas hose than for a university man to go into politics." It would be easy to shake the contents of a large acid bottle over Mr. Underwood's head, but what good would it be to sizzle him and cancel him out! Perhaps he meant well, and he spoke with the limitations •of the "practical man," to whom life is something bound' ed by twopence and a rule of thumb. The "practical man" lives to eat — to "eat what he has earned by being "practical," and thS workshop is his whole world. What he cannot put on his back or under ib can be legislated out of existence. AMIABLE INCOMPETENCE. To the "practical man" the university man is an amiable listless being, with, a large bald forehead, and spectacles to match, and so atsent-minded that his mind is liable to special taxation as an absentee landlord. This gentle person puts salt in his tea in mistake for sugar, and is so absorbed in the problem of whether to-day is to-morrow (with a dash of yesterday) that he does not perceive any difference. He also puts on a dress suit in mistake for pyjamas when he is going to bed, and cits for hours, with a miscroscope, counting the hairs on flies' feet. This university person has no evil in him. He is very careful not to harm the fly while he is patiently counting the fluff. He would not harm anybody. All he desires is peace to live many years putting salt in his tea and treacle (instead of mustard) on his roast beef. Of course, the comic papers have helped many people, in. addition to Mr. Underwood, to get that impression of university men, whether professors or graduates. SUSPICION IN NEW ZEALAND. Mi-. Underwood's frank opinion has been shared by many "practical" New Zealanders for many years. Some capable young men, alert, shrewd, quick, have found that the confession of a university training has been a hindrance rather than a benefit. Of course, the professions of school teaching and the churches, x as well as a few others, not concerned with industrial or any ordinary economic operations,- are exceptions. But as soon as materials and every-day calculations and rough-and-tumble work come! into the business, your university man, ipso facto, is "not practical." This "practical" is a blessed word, but some of its users would be hard-pushed to give' a sensible definition. Their attitude amounts to a contention that sharpening the mind blunts it, and broadening and deepening the faculties shrinks them. WHAT IS LIFE? To the "practical man" life is a "practical business," measured by a foot rule or rule of thumb. Arts and classics to give a sweet savour to life are a "waste of time." But what does the "practical man" do with.the time that he saves? Equipping himself to be more "practical"? And then? The conductor cries "end of section," and the grave at the terminus gapes before the "practical person" has learned the rudiments of life. Thefse precious people, with their raucous cry of "practical," are the cabbages of life. Your cabbage is an eminently practical vegetable. It works day and night in the same place. It may think about the sun, moon and stars between whiles in fattening its stodgy heart, but makes no confession about these meditations. The cabbage shames the rose, which pays only a short rent of fragrance and colour for a year's occupation of a patch. To the "practical man" Latin is a mumbo- jumbo and hocus-pocus of "arums" and "orums," of less use than larrikins' slang in this "practical" world. It does not occur to him that Latin assists mightily in the mastery of English, which even the practical person may admit is a useful language, and Latin is a friend to help to open the treasuries of other languages. The "practical man" has no patience for processes which teach the "why and wherefore."- He wants "job lots" of "practical knowledge," 6x2 slabs of things "useful for a living." May not one weep for him? BUT POLITICS? Then for the porcupine and the politics. It is perhaps not surprising to hear the doctrine that knowledge of English, history, political economy, and constitutional law are a hindrance to a successful career in "politics" as the profession is sometimes practised in Australasia. Perhaps it avails more to know whether it is more advantageous to kiss the baby on the forehead or the cheek at the back-door. Certainly some of the modern political arts are not taught at the universities. The university student may imagine that sturdiness of spirit, allied with knowledge of current affairs of State and history, may commend him, but the "practical man"' is not against him, and the "practical man" has a power to make himself fit any shape which a particular meeting may specify. A charge of "too theoretical" is brought against the university man, and he is knocked aside at the polls by a "practical" opponent who promises to wheedle a new post-office or Joek-np or railway station verandah from the Government. Can one wonder then at Mi. Underwood's simile about the fretful porcupine and the canvas hose?