WOTS THE USE EV EDUCATION?

Free Lance, Volume XVI, Issue 839, 4 August 1916, Page 8

WOTS THE USE EV EDUCATION?

Katow, Katow, to the Great Queen _ Cow. AMONGST the many selfish and silly views expressed by certain delegates at the recent conference of the New Zealand Farmers' Union was one to the effect that the teaching of Latin should be abolished in the schools of the Dominion because, forsooth, "Latin is of no use to a boy who is going to milk oows." But why stop at Latin ? No doubt it really matters nothing to the milker whether, or not he can translate "Bulbus built a wall." But then, on the same plea, it is quite useless for the New Zealand kiddie to learn ordinary English grammar, or to spell, or to be. able to read and write decently. As for geography, what matters it, according to the Gow Party's ideas, whether a New 'Zealand boy knows that London is the capital of England, or that Capetown is not.somewhere near Canton ? Why bother, too, about history ? No doubt a boy —that model, and especially that cheap boy, the ideal milker the Cow Party dreams of —who does not know what Trafalgar, Waterloo, Ypres, and Gallipoli stand for in the story of his race, would be just as good a milker as the youth who had a fair smattering of history. * * * # Why bother then about schools; about education, about the future of the race? So long as we worship at the shrine of Her Most Sacred Majesty Queen Cow everything will go well for the farmers. All other people have, of course, no right to exist. They are mere "parasites" upon the all-import-ant Cow Party. Many years ago a certain British nobleman made himself notorious by declaring: Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, But leave us still our old nobility. A latter-day approved Farmers' Union version of this may well run—. we shall not attempt a metrical version —might run: "Let schools and schoolmasters die out in the land, but spare, oh spare us our cheap milkers." To Hades with the humanities. Kotow, kotow to the Cow !