THE JUGGERNAUT OF TO-DAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15175, 14 December 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE JUGGERNAUT OF TO-DAY

BT TOHTOGA.

' In* another week the Juggernaut of To-day • will be back in its stable-temple, leaving the adoring multitude to gather up all surviving victims and to bandage their cuts and salve their bruises and splice their broken limbs in readiness for the next outrolling of the deadly car; in other words, the Schools will have closed, children and teachers will be free to recover as far as they can in a few weeks from the deadly pressure of the educational system. . It is, of course, the duty of every child to devoutly return thanks to the merciful Providence which let it be born in the Twentieth Century instead of in the Tenth, and in this happy Christian land instead of in the unschooled Sahara. And it is, of course, proof of sheer perversity, and of original sinfulness, dooming to the fire that vis never quenched, to doubt the sanctity and the divinity of an educational system which teaches every child of ten more than was known to George Washington at fifty, not to mention good George the Third, who was never worried with wisdom throughout his long life. Yet it is a fact unmistakable that we are paying dearly for popular education, paying in health, in vigour and in sanity, paying in height, in breadth, in depth of chest, in steadiness of temper, in toughness of bone, in clarity of eyesight and in soundness of teeth. Hail practice and proportion, English spellings and Roman letterings, nature study and geography and commer- 1 cial principles! These are good for a nation, without doubt necessary perhaps |to those who want to trade with the Eskimo and make profit out of' China. : Jut " nothing to be said for the nerves that once were sound as a bell and the teeth that could once bite ships' biscuits and the digestions that never knew what it was to be out of gear? Are we to admit that civilisation cannot be carried on without that stupendous sacrifice of infantile vigour and juvenile vitality going on in the schools?

Modern pedagogy i can . be a hundred times more oppressive than the old. A ! hundred years ago, fifty- years ago, childhood was in tacit revolt against the pedagogue, and presented to its enemy the magnificent defence of an unfailing passive resistance. The birch and the cane, tlte taws and the stick were in every teachers hand, but the average child won through with very little injury. There was no known means by which the average child could be-interested in its studies more than was good for it, and the result was that the minds of children remained unstrained long after education, became common. Gradually, however, pedagogy became an art. Teachers arose who saw how the minds of children might be captured and concentrated on the learning of lejtsons und the modern system was established: To-day, schooling is not only universal and compulsory, , but it is overwhelming; children do not even resist it passively, for they have been beaten from that ancient defence ; in this land, in every civilised land, there is a schoolhouse in every centre, and into this uchoolhouse . the children are drawn every, morning and thrown out tired and wearied every night. ■ Teachers as a class are worn and aged,. long before their time, by the deadly effort of keeping, con-, stantly the 'attention and interest of the youngsters* . -and the nations are decaying because the youngsters are thus exhausted and,devitalised before they come into their teens. If it were not for the long holidays our educational system would have broken down long which is rather a reason why the intelligent public should demand the abolition of long school holidays. The modern pedagogue, the expert gentleman, the driver of the great car, is a really remarkable individual who looks upon the cramming of a child with "knowledge" much as a Strasburg shopkeeper looks upon the cramming of a goose. "Of the normal, natural conditions of childhood he never thinks and never cares; he does not dream of the happy careless years devoted solely to growth and developf ment, of the wholesome physical existence ! which lays fast and deep the foundations ,of a strong and virile life; he does not even realise that every sound instinct of childhood challenges pain and thirsts after danger while it recoils from the things that are wearying and monotonous as though it knew them for the poisons that they are. Popular education has simply seized upon the period of life which under all ordinary circumstances was a profitably idle one, and has driven children into schools just as they were once in the North of England driven into mills. The schools are better than the mills—sometimes. This is indicated by the admitted fact that the death-rate among schoolchildren is not as great as the death-rate among mill-children, and the death-rate of school children might be still lighter if as much care was taken of schoolrooms as of millrooms. But schools are not so much better than mills that we should be proud of them.

That the school system, as we have it, is sucking the vitality out of the rising generation every intelligent, medical man knows. That the gain is wofully inadequate for the loss is notorious. That the system will keep cheerfully on for an indefinite period is equally certain. For what are we to do ? Churches and schools, Government departments and private enterprises, all gather round them a clientele which interestedly insists upon their importance and upon the impossibility of doing rithout them. The car of Juggernaut cannot be left to rot in its stable-temple; it must be dragged out regularly because so many are interested in the dragging. The Empire, we aro told, is built upon the public schools —but it isn't. The Empire is buiß upon sound bodies and strong arms and shrewd brains, and will perish if, as a race, we lose our virility and our teeth. Education is a good thing if it is the tool of a strong man and a buxom woman, bftt it is a worthless thing if for it have been given red Blood ana big bones and red passions. To fake a child out of the sunlight and the open air, to call it off the grass and from the shade of trees and away from the swish of surf .'is it runs along the sandy beaches, for the best hours of its little life, day after day, year after year, cannot possibly be good. To put a child, any child, into some of the rooms devoted in Auckland to school uses is far from right; if a private employer did it to children whom he employed he would certainly bo prosecuted, yet the Department and the Board do it all the time. For departments and boards have- become as Babylonian kings or Roman emperors whom they will they suffocate and to whom they will they give breathin" space. They do not even trouble to give hygienic conditions to those whose lives they are spoiling. They ruin eyesight, twist spinal columns, spread all manner of diseases, destroy teeth, impair digestion and then ask us to believe that we also are . worshipping Diana of the Ephesians. If it could only be summed up the commvmitv would stand aghast at the atrocious suffering inflicted on little children by the educational system we pride ourselves upon—as they prided themselves on Juggernaut. It cannot stand as we have it for the sufficient reason that no people could suffer under it for man/ years and still be strong enough to maintain independence upon earth. Intellectually, the nation may be the better for the public schools; physically, the nation is undeniably the worse for the public schools; and when the Health Department has time it may be able to teach us how to cultivate the mind without demoralising the body —a problem older than the Greeks and not yet answered here in Auckland. 1