TOPICS OF THE TIMES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4564, 3 November 1937, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Education's Chief Object. "I am not much of an optimist about the results to be obtained from education. I value the results highly, but I do not share the enthusiasm of those who believe that, if this or that educational system were adopted, we should be marching rapidly toward a William Morris Utopia," writes Mr. Robert Lynd in the "Schoolmaster." "I do not believe that human beings would grow up more intelligent or humane if the teaching of Latin and Greek were abolished. Ido not think that, if the examination system were scrapped, young men would as a consequence leave the university with finer or freer minds than the young men of to-day. I do not believe that, if every school were turned into a Liberty Hall, the emergence of a race of happier or nobler human beings would be the inevitable sequel. The chief object of education is, I suppose, to provide .the young human being with the instruments for acquiring knowledge and arranging it intelligently; and there is much to be said for the view that both the examination system and the teaching of Latin have helped in this."