EDUCATION'S PART

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 4, 4 July 1940, Page 4

EDUCATION'S PART

IN WAR AND PEACE

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

The part that education plays in the making of wars, and.the part that it might and should play in preventing further wars, wss stressed by Mr. F. Martyn Renner, principal of Rongotai College, in an address last night to parents on the school curriculum. -

"Not many of us realise," said Mr. Renner, "the part education plays both in making war and in reconstruction after war. Education is a powerful factor in both departments. As to the effectiveness and potency of education in preparing a nation's vision and its manhood for war, reflect for a moment on the thrse separate phases of German history over the past 100 years. Here they are: The Bismarck policy from 1860 to 1871, the Prussian Junker ambitions towards Pan-Germanism from 1890 to 1918; and now the Hitler dream of world domination from 1932----1940. Each one of the sinister movements achieved its initial momentum and driving power in the schools, colleges, and universities in Germany." ■It was left to Hitler to forge with unscrupulous hand the youth of Germany into a weapon for total warfare, continued Mr. Renner. "He has within eight years crushed the idealism out of the youth of Germany, blunted their finer feelings, "yet sharpened their lust for cruelty and domination; in short, made of them mere mechanised tools for him to use. All this he has achieved through the medium of*the new type of education which he introduced when he came int? power. I have talked to people who have visited Germany during the last few years; and all of them say the same thing—the terrible picture of a nation. of children prepared carefully and thoroughly for immolation on the altar of world domination. Education plus mechanisation has developed a technique in warfare without parallel in. the history of the world. The significant figures are that the bulk of Germany's man-power on land, sea, and in the air, ranges from the youth of 16 years to the young.man of 25 years."

It was to the children that the democracies would have to look for the rebuilding of the world after the war, and it was terribly important that, the children should be given the right kind of education to fit them for the task. After the war great economic, social, and financial problems would arise, and it was of vital importance that the children of the present generation should be better prepared to solve them than were the people after the last war.