TRAINING TO LIVE

Evening Star, Issue 23650, 9 August 1940, Page 5

TRAINING TO LIVE

EDUCATION AND THE FUTURE DEMOCRACY BEGINS IN SCHOOL “ I sometimes fear that the schools are apt to lose sight of one of the golden aims of education,” said Air J. Garfield Anderson, M.A. M.Sc,, speaking to the Vocational Guidance Association last night. Education, by Cardinal Manning’s definition, was the formation of the whole man. It was teaching children how to live, nothing less and nothing more. A good education was that which enabled the child in after years to live well. But this aim was sometimes crowded out of recognition by other things. .In the child’s mind education consisted of knowing such subjects as English and arithmetic, and the idea was formed that life was a bundle of more or less unpleasant things, and a weariness to the flesh. Was it any wonder that this idea was carried on into the child’s life-work ?

The future would see greater demands on children. The world was becoming smaller and social services would assume a larger place. The teaching of social service and the ihculcation of a community sense that would eventually take in the world was correspondingly more important. In the' second place a greater degree of competition would produce a greater demand for specialised: knowledge. There was a danger here of concentrating in education on specific preparation for a specific job, with no time left for purely disinterested learning. The specialist class was not likely to produce a leader, and even .to-day there were many caught in the specialisation net. Thirdly, the machine, the keynote of industrial development, would result in fewer positions becoming available, and would increase the problem of a rational use of leisure time. The interests of young people were not intellectually stimulated, and this was more evident in rural districts than in Dunedin, where there were such excellent facilities for them to continue their education.

There was no easy remedy. Psychology could not be changed overnight. A full life involved the use of the highest faculties trained to concert pitch. It was a life of effort, and meant the arduous cultivation of tastes and the full employment of the powers given us. Whatever Hitler had or had not done, he had realised that education was allied to the State. “If we want Democracy in this country,” Air Anderson stressed, “ we must train for it. We will not have it otherwise.” To fashion a free and equal society out of the unequal material to hand we must begin in the schools. True education would attempt to get to grips with Democracy in a fundamental way, and would not attempt the production of the aristocratic or quasi-aristocratic type of pupil. . ‘ H. G. Wells had said that “ civilisation was a race between education and catastrophe.” Professor L. P. Jacks was probably nearer the mark when he defined education as “ the key industry of a nation.” But the aim of education was to fit the child not for a Government job, not for a safe job, but for an abundant and rich life.