PREVENTING WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 145, 16 December 1939, Page 8

PREVENTING WAR

RIGHT EDUCATION

THE PEOPLE'S NEED

VISION OF PEACE

The part education could play in preventing war was referred to by Miss G. E. Mayhew, headmistress of Mars- j den School, when speaking at the annual prize-giving ceremony on Thursday. Miss Mayhew, in her report, deplored the fact that boys and girls in I New Zealand were leaving school and going into a world which was not free of war, and asked why had not modern education found a way of producing men and women capable of stopping war. Millions of people longed for peace, yet did not know how to stop war. Surely, she said, education would teach them if they could find the right kind of education. "As the failure is most apparent in Germany let us look at German schools," she continued. "Thu*ty years ago education was a matter a German child had to take very seriously, there were long hours of study and few, if any, hours of play; the intellect of the child was the only concern of the school authorities. As a reaction from this came the so-called 'new education' schools, many of whose theories originated in Germany. In these schools the child lived on its own plane, found its own interests, and its intellect received little outside stimulus. Now the pendulum has swung right back again, and education is a mixture of iron discipline and the heroworship of an emotional people. True it is that with these go much selfsacrifice and self-discipline, yet it does not seem as if either of these extremes could raise a generation to which war was an impossibility. "Let us look at education among the English-speaking peoples of the world. What do we see? To the masses educa-1 tion is a means by which examinations are passed and positions gained—a means by which to be equipped to earn a living; a necessary and even a praiseworthy object, but—has it raised a generation capable of stopping war?" "As I think of the world of school and university I feel that we need more simplicity, more sincerity of thought, far more of the ability to study j and to think deeply. We need people ito be fully, not half, educated. "I am convinced that the time is coming when a way will be found among civilised nations to stop war, and in finding that way education will play a vital part. In the meantime wt must make every effort to give our children those things which we know for a certainty that they need during this period of their lives in order to develop a balanced, controlled, and long-sighted vision—a vision that will see peace ahead, not war. The home must give them a sense of security, the school a happy and busy life full of natural interests and steady work; both must strive from their very early days to give them the power to think as individuals, but to act with a longsighted and unselfish view for the general good." The Bishop of Wellington (the Rt. Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland) commended the views expressed by Miss Mayhew. He said that in education mass production was the last object that should be achieved. "That is something we have seen enough of," he said. A school such as Marsden was the very reverse of the mass-production idea. It had been said that the real | goal of education should be "not knowing, but being and doing." The whole object of education was to enable the j pupils to form convictions of their own. i Much was heard these days . about people having "to be in the swim," by* he would remind them that such people would always be swimming downwards —not upwards. Life was never intended to be safe for a moment; if it was not a hazard, we would not "exist" at all. Those leaving school would be leaving equipped for life, and he urged them to take their posts in life accordingly.