BRIGHTER DAY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 305, 9 December 1931, Page 8

BRIGHTER DAY

IDEALS OF TRUE SERVICE OLD SYSTEMS PABBINQ. CHANGED ATTITUDES. Service, In Its new aspect, was the subject ''’an address delivered by the Bev. H. W. Newell before the Wellington Botarv club yesterday. In seeking to indicate the quiet revolution that real service was effecting in various conceptions of life, the speaker gave an arresting illustration. “It is one of the significant signs of our times,” he said, “this thought of service as being the right attitude to take up to life. Take the field of education. The old method was that of getting information out of the teacher or the text book and putting it into the heads of the pupils. This had to be done in order to reach the great goal of all education, which was conceived to be the passing of examinations, the getting of a degree, or a professional diploma or certificate. Any methods were fair if the end could be achieved —force, competition, threats, punishments, the evil ways of rivalry, bribes in the form of prizes, and so forth. These are still largely employed m many schools, but a brighter day is beginning to dawn for education, when it shall be regarded as the unfolding or developing of one’s faculties and personalities, for the good of the whole. The keynote of the newer education is this same thing, service, ‘the little child in the midst.’ The child is now in the centre, no longer the system or the subject, or the examination, and it is he who is served and cared for. COMMERCIAL AND BUSINESS CHANGES. “Wo see the same revolutionary change beginning in the commercial and business life. The old order put dividends for the company and private profit—for the individual as the mainspring and purpose of business life. It was felt that all was fair in commerce and that unlimited competition between rivals was the only way to ensure a healthy business life. Greed for gain and quick wealth was felt to be the best urge to invention and better conditions. Our day is seeing a change in this attitude. It is being recognised that the principle of ruthlessness must be modified. The same things applies to many of the more beautiful and enduring aspects of commercial endeavour. “In polities, strangely enough, we are still mediaeval in our conceptions. Many still regard it as a kind of game, a sort of musical chairs, in which one party sits down and the other goes growling round, or as a dog-fight, with much snarling, biting, and throwing up of dust. We still live in days when people believe that force can do anything of real value, only here it is the force of the larger ballot-box. . . . We have to go back to the great philosophers to remind us that the aim of politics is affection, the joining of people together in a common unit for service. “The spirit of service is ever invading such a grim domain as prison administration and the treatment of criminals. As the result of ordering corporal punishment for boys a London magistrate found that 20 per cent, were back again in a month and 80 per cent, within two years; whereas I under the probationary system 90 per I cent, were found to do well. GRACE REPLACES FEAR. “In religion,” continued Mr Newell, “the old system of fear is being replacefd by grace. I speak thus of the ten. dency to place service in the centre. It is, after all, only another means of realising the scientific spirit, which ‘sits down before a fact like a little child,’ as Huxley said, which puts aside all preconceived notions, and approaches truth with humility. We hear much of men and systems which strive to make their way by force or fear — the Mussolinis, the Lenins, and Adolf Hitlers—the backwash of the old is still strong. But let us take heart —the truth of things is surely on the side of humility and service. “A sou»d foundation has been laid by such men as Nasaryk, of Czechoslovakia, in politics, Montessori and Sanderson in education, Rowntree and Grunding in commerce and agriculture. A teacher who can convert school discipline into discipleship; a manager expert in the ways not of markets but of men; a statesman who dares to stand, ind. if necessary, lose his career for truth; a workman who has the courage to go into the deep places of life and keep his love for beauty and right—these are the true servants of our day, the servants who will bring in the brighter day to come.”—“Dominion.”