EMPIRE CITIZENSHIP

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 28 September 1927, Page 3

EMPIRE CITIZENSHIP

VAGUE HUMANITARIANISM APPEAL TO TEACHERS. Sir Halford Mackinder, chairman of the Imperial Shipping and Economic Committees, speaking at a meeting of thflse attending the City, ot London vacation course in education, urged teachers in selecting what should be taught not to be led away by a vague “humanitarianism.” Teachers were tempted to yield to what he would call the reaction from the Great War. The facts of the war were so hideous, and the revulsion from these facts so strong as to lead to a determination that, if possible, future generations should not be subjected to such an ordeal. There was. therefore, a tendency to submerge one side of history and magnify another. Truth really was to be found in a balance; it was neither black nor white: it was normallv gray. Teachers had got to be political philosophers. They might say what thev liked about the desirability of teaching voting people the management of their parish, of teaching them how trade unions ana companies were conducted, but they must give attention to Vie solid, hard fact that the people of this country had stomachs, and that this country contained food for its inhabitants for only six or seven weeks. This country was m the midst of a great new experiment. This was the first age in which there had been an attempt to educate all men and women, and education, like broadcasting, had its dangers. He pleaded with teachers not to shirk facts and to be careful in selecting ideals. The children they were teaching would have to deal with a very different world when they were grown up. If one had due balance patience was a sign of strength. This country had never tidied things up fust for the sake of seeing them tidy. The worst thing one could do was to kick un a dust, for every particle of human dust kicked up had a will. Tn teaching citizenship they had, therefore, got to eschew a4I questions of ideals when concerned with machinery, A NOBLE RESPONSIBILITY. Whether they considered our foreign policy, or Imperial relations: whatever might be their views on the wickedness or righteousness of past history; whatever their ideals for the future, they had a system so vast and with such momentum that they could not stop it or change it in a lifetime without causing universal disaster. Everything in this world rested on balance. In teaching citizenship they must not concentrate simply on the parish rump, but, starting from the panhs pump, they could gradually widen the horizon of their pupils, always remembering that when they reached manhood and womanhood they would be responsible for forming the public opm.on which was going not only to govern questions of right and justice between different classes of people in this country, but the movement of the British nation among the nations of the world.

The British' Empire was like a great comet with a vast tail, and would be thrown into the utmost disaster if the Mother Country, the nucleus, ceased to null its weight. They had in the British Empire an instalment of what they hopea Ultimately would be achieved—such regulation of the affairs of humanity that they might get nd of many -f the baser facts of present existence. The responsibility of the teacher was a different responsibility from that of the statesman, but it was a fundamental and noble responsibility.