ON THINGS IN GENERAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10422, 21 April 1897, Page 3

ON THINGS IN GENERAL.

THE DIAMOND JUBILEE. It is felt to be the duty of every loyal enbjeob of Her Majesty to make an independent suggestion as to the most befitting way of celebrating the Diamond Jubilee. Without in tny way disparaging the spirit of enthusiasm that) has been evoked with the

object of showing our loyalty and affection for the Queen, it must be admitted that the movement so far among us might bo characterised as intending one for Her Majesty and two or three for ourselves. It is in the highest degree desirable, to be sare, that we should have a permanent memorial, and one in which the benevolent spirit of the people may be embalmed. But it is an entire overlooking of the complex constitution of human nature to think that such an

idea as this fulfils all the condition i of a great public rejoicing. It ia to be noted that the great central demonstration at London is purely spectacular, and criticise as we may the folly of wasting raonoy in mere display, there is something in the human mind that craves such i\ thing as an accompaniment and expression of popular joy. By all means let us have an institution for the children, or the convalescent, or the blind, but surely we are not to overlook tho necessity of something that will appeal more vividly to the popular imagination, and which in every age has been recognised us befitting the celebration of a great public incident. We shall, of course, have squibs and crackers in the streets, and many business people will give expression in a natural way to their feelings in illuminating their establishments, and rockets will be shot up into the air, and fireworks will be displayed in the indulgence of many a private fancy. But it there nothing in which as a whole people we can give effectivo expression to our feelings besides the dull and prosaic process of droppine our coins into the collecting plate ? What of a huge bon6r« on the top of Rangitoto? Nobn mere tiny bluzo that can be sought out by the teles copes, bub a great sheet of flame from a hundred tar burrola encircling the whole rim of the crater, and lighting up the Hauraki Gulf, pouring tho glare of tte conflagration from Mahurangi Heads to »he Thames and from Cape Coiville to the Manukau Heads. Viewed from Auckland there would be something impressively and weirdly picturesque in the prim old mountain raising its beacon light away up in midheaveus and lighting up some thousands of square miles of land and water. Or if our ambitions don't soar the height of Rangitoto we have at our doors Mount Eden, which admirnbly leuds itself to such a form of spectacular display, and on which a colossal bonfire would present) to the eyei an effective demonstration that would live in the memory of our children, and by the eide of which all our rockets and fireworks would be commonplace.

A WHOLE DAY HYMN. Nothing as yet appears to hare come ol the suggestion that the Queen should give the signal for the commencement; of the hymn of praise in St. Paul's ; and bhab at the sajme moment she should touch an electric button that would eomi the invitation at the eame instant to assemblies of her loyal subjects throughout her wide dominions. The effect of it would be that ad one instant, though apparently at all the several hours of the 24, the hymn of praise would sound simultaneously from every quarter of the globe. But a scarcely less picturesque suggestion comes from loyal Canada, Co the effect, that ab noon of thaiday in every parb of Her Majesty's dominions all British citizens in their several assemblages should engage in sing" ing the hymn of praise. The effect of this would be that as the noonday sun advanced from longitude to longitude the same hymn of praise would be wafted upwards and carried onward by the sun—one continuous stream of sacred melody flowing round the globe. We in New Zealand should be the first to raise the song of praise, and aa we finished it would be taken up in more western longitudes as the sun passed onward, and Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe, America, taking up the strain from point to point of Her Majesty's dominions would form one continued song of thanksgiving circling with the noontide round the world. THE THREE B.\

While thousands of educationists have been wrestling with the problem of the education of the masses, and the three It's are accepted as the indispensable elements of social salvation, it is a singular thing that none of them has seriously thought of removing the great stone of stumbling that lies at the very threshold of the schools. Aβ for writing, the time is nod far away when the typewriter will take the place of the goose quill, and hooka and potsticks will do longer vex the young child's soul. But as for the two other R's, reading and arithmetic, when we think of the time that is consumed by children in mastering their unnatural find artificial complexities, it is not exaggeration to say that if they were only simplified, as they might be, every child in his school days would have enough time on hand to learn a trade. However a child of tender years comes to learn or remember that) COW spells " cow " is a wonder to the adult mind. There is not one of the letters contained in it that bears the faintest resemblance in sound to any part of tin word that is spelled, and it would be quite as easy to train a child to believe that the word " cow" was spelled by d-o-g. To see the unreasonableness of our use of the letter sounds, it is not necessary to resort to puzzle words such as " cough," of which not a letter is sounded correctly, foi by far the larger number of our words are represented by characters supposed to be symbols of sound that are quite arbitrarily used in our building them up into words, and though we laugh at the Chinese for their thousands of symbols, which it takes years for even an adult to master, we are just as ridiculous in the absurdity of our use of our six and twenty. Now we sometimes hear of the benefit it, would be to us all if we could resort to phonetic spelling, but) probably little thought i; given to the sufferings of unfortunate children, and to the utter waste of the most precious years of their lives in mastering the difficulties of spelling and reading, which under a rational system might be acquired in onethird of the time.

THE WORST OF THE LOT. But for torture to children and waste of their precious years the worst of the R's ia arithmetic. Not that the science of numbers is itself either perplexing or wasteful of time, but the artificial application of it to the business of life is a torment that, begua in the schools, continue!) to the end of our lives. It seems a paradoxical thing that the most commercial nation in the world has the clumsiest tools of trade, and what with our weights and measures, fur everything with which we deal, wo are handicapped us no other people in this busy world of ours. But it is the children that have to bear the cross, for we can get accustomed to the affliction as eels are said to net used to skinning. But it is dreadful to think of the needless sufferings to which we are subjected in childhood, in consequence of the hoary stupidity that ha.« been handed down to us from our fathers. Our measures of weight we have divided into twentieths, liundred-and-twelfllis, and sixteenths, and we vary them by the kind of article to be weighed. Our measures of length wt divide by eight, by forty, by five and a half, by three, and by twelve. Our monev we divide into twentieths and twelfths. Oui measures of capacity or quantity we regulate and alter by the quality of the con. tents, aud to the mattering of these vagaries we compel the sacrifice of years ol childhood, the greater part of which would be spared if only by a supreme effort we overcame our indolent procrastination, and established the decimal notation. It may be said that all those sufferings have the quality of mental gymnastics, and if nothing could be substituted for them they would no doubt be worth preserving as such. But as no one would advocate the profitless work of the treadmill if the work of the convict can be more usefully employed, it it as wasteful as it is cruel to hire years of the young lives of children squandered in this idle way, while there are a hundred useful things that have to be left unlearned for the want of opportunity and time. Educationists usually concern themselves in improving the system by? which children may be made to learn; bub' really the reform should begin at the other end, and an effort should be made to simplify and facilitate the work of the schools, by removing the needless and cumbersome burthens that have been given by the folly of our fathers and continued by the stupidity of their descendants. The Gkjuuul.