NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18685, 15 April 1924, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

SMALLER SCHOOL CLASSES. The question of reducing the sizes of school classes is the subject of a circular sent to local education authorities in England and "Wales. Some reduction has taken place In « recent years, says the letter, but general progress has been disappointing. "In the view of .the board," it is added, ** a determined effort must now be made to reduce the size of unduly large classes. There are a large number of fully qualified teachers out of employment who could immediately be utilised to effect reduction." The board adds that classes approaching 60 should be " cut " during the present financial year, and that it hopes, with the ■ co-operation of the local authorities, in a few years to make a maximum of 50 a practicable objective. " Authorities should aim at such a restriction in the size of classes as will render the instruction , more effective, and a maximum of 40 (on the register) may even now be taken as the objective for this purpose." The board proposes not to accept plans for new schools or extensions with classrooms designed to accommodate more than 50 pupils.

THE' BASIS OF REFORM. Try what formula or panacea yon will, there is no escaping from the conclusion that the one indispensable preliminary to all reform is a change of mind and spirit, says Dr. Wingfield-Stratford, in his book on the reconstruction of life. Given men with ill-organised minds and sympathies undeveloped, arm them with the resources of modern civilisation, and they will bring any system of government to ruin. That is what we mean by saying that all genuine and vital reform must be religious. We desire to hold no brief for any particular creed or revelation, but that need be. no bar to our saying that society will never be better until it has adopted for its-own the spirit so unforgettably expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. So long as hatred and revenge are the motives of our conduct, so long as our justice is that of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, so long as we lack that divine magnanimity that loves our neighbour even when he is our enemy, so long we brethren and neighbours are v condemned to tread the monotonous round of waste and collective suicide. No laws or institutions, be they never so cunningly contrived, can provide the way of escape, nor can any possible revolution avail unless it be one of the spirit. ;

MASS EDUCATION. ** Are we safe from an irruption of intellectual barbarism ?" asks Dr. Barnes. " Such barbarism corrupted the legacy of Greek thought of the Golden Age long before classical civilisation was destroyed. There are some signs that a similar period of decline is beginning in Western Europe and North America. Universal education, if it is of the right kind, may check such deterioration. But in actual fact such education as , the masses now have has done harm. When men of ability who belonged to, or entered, the ruling classes were the sole source of ideas a fairly high standard was developed. But now that everyone can read and write certain superstitions are becoming respectable because they are so widely held. Crude thought is published. It. attracts crude minds and the men who by superior mental power ought to mould the thought of their time are ignored. The spread of crude pseudo-Christian and nonChristian religious cults, which nowadays show deplorable. vitality, . is a most discouraging phenomenon." «

A COSTLY PREJUDICE.

The tendency among professional classes to direct their sons into professional characters is discussed by Mr. Stephen Owynn in Time and Tide. Herding the pick of young men into a narrow and crowded field impoverishes one of the most essential services in the life of the nation, be declares. We- are paying dear for our prejudice against shopkeeping. One may accept the traditional view that the public schools and universities turn out a good type of character. Their standard of conduct is admittedly high, perhaps higher than their standard of ability. A number of them now go into the business of manufacture, when -it is inherited. But very few are in shopkeeping. Yet we are just beginning to realise, it seems to me, that the hitch in our social machinery lies somewhere about the process of distribution, and I am much inclined to think that the problem of remedy is a moral one. . . ... The idea that it is a shopkeeper's duty to pass on goods to the public, for the public advantage, does not dawn. Yet it is at least conceivable that a man bred in the best English tradition would think it insufferable that for narrow consideration of profit food should be wasted in a country where many are ill able to afford food. A man bringing such a tradition to shopkeeping would certainly find {I am reasoning from Irish experience) if he was in a backward community that the spirit of his trade would be against him. The trader who sells too cheap and brings down the rata of profit is a blackleg, just like the man who gives too much labour in return for a standard wage.

LEARNING SHOPKEEPING. After telling of a. University man who made a success of shopkeeping, Mr. Stephen Gwynn goes on:—I do not see how in any of the so-called *' professions " a man could have achieved the same result*. Yet the field of his success is an unknown land to the schools and universities. There you will get guidance to help you in the choice of a profession; nobody there will tell you how to become a shopkeeper. The superior education of England is deaf and blind to all that vastly important side of English life. Yet it seems to me that the thing most needed in the social fabric is to improve 'the process of distributionto see that both buyer and producer get fair play. The public schools and universities are full to-day of young men brought up in a tradition that Bets more store by the quality of service given than by the rewards attained in . cash. Suppose they want to bo shopkeepersnobody can tell them how to begin.