FUTILE EDUCATION.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume VL, Issue 3149, 19 March 1934, Page 2

FUTILE EDUCATION.

DEAN INGE HITS OUT. Dean Inge told the Classical Association that the four things he would choose most in life were: Wisdom (knowledge of the relative value of tilings); domestic happiness; and recognition and encouragement, which is a great part of friendship. He was not sure on his fourth point, but said that perhaps it would be the welfare of his country. The Dean was delivering his presidential address to the association on the subject, “ Greeks and Barbarians.” He drew a picture of a visitor from another planet sent to study Western civilisation. These, he thought would be some of the visitor’s reflections: “When I entered their places of worship I found the congregations solemnly repeating extracts from the ferociously patriotic literature of an ■ancient Bedouin tribe. They sang a great deal about Jerusalem and Jordan .and David, but not a word about London and Thames and King Alfred. Then I went to their public schools and universities, and found that the staple of their'education was the poetry, history and philosophy of an Eastern Mediterranean people who flourished more than 2000 years ago. Surely,” he would say •<<he r n is a civilisation which has not

yet found its soul. It is content to "borrow from and imitate the ancients. Arc not Themes and Severn, rivers of England, better than all the waters of Isra'T? Are not D nte, Shakespeare and Goethe as gr<m poets as Homer, Sophocles and Virg’ ? Has philosophy made no advance si co Plato and Aristotle? Are the tr jks of Alcibiadcs and Nicias to get I rperbolus ostracised anv move.importar than the squabbles on the London Coi ity Council?” Ever since the Hcnaiss nee, sa d the Dean, -wo have boon un fr these two influences, Hellenism, ar Hcbra mu We had not produced an indepei lent culture moulded by the pftheri genius.