EDUCATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1387, 20 November 1918, Page 2

EDUCATION.

THE CHEAPEST THING GOING TO-DAY. Dr. A. E. Shipley, the Vice-Chan-cellor »r Cambridge University, in an address to the National Union or Teachers, said some scathing things about our attitude to education. "Arthur Benson has recently reminded us, next to our birth and to our death' education is by far the most important feature of our life. To tb.ese three important events, J 3hould myself—but I speak as an amateur—have added marriage, but in this matter my friend Mr Benson is as inexperienced as I am. But whether he is right or I am right, wo teachers are placed on the same level as the Divine, the Musician, and, dare 1 add, the Undertaker:-' There is, however, this difference. Whereas the administrations of the former are intermittent and comparatively temporary, a. school master s care is continuous and lasts for years. DIVINE, PHYSICIAN, UNDERTAKER. "Education is the one hope of the future. Without education is it conceivable that the dreams of those who, like the Dean of St. Paul's, preach the Gospel of Genetics, can ever be realised? Education is of more importance than politics, for it ought to educate the politician, though, 1 fear it clues not always do so. "Education, then, as a profession, ought somehow to make a career tor our best men. Does it? " 'The cheapest thing going to-day, says the Satirist, 'is education.' 'I pay my cook,' said Crates ironically, 'four pounds a year; but a philosopher can be hired lor about sixpence and a tutor for three-halfpence.' " 'So to-day,' wrote Erasmus, 'a man stands aghast at the thought of paying for his boy's education a sum which would buy' a foal or hire a farm servant.' 'Frugality—it is another name for madness!' After 400 years the madness has not abated.