CONSERVATISM IN EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19008, 4 May 1925, Page 7

CONSERVATISM IN EDUCATION.

Sir, —"Sanity in Education" seems tc overlook some of the values of education. One of its proper aims is to produce good citizens. Accountants and navvies ar« citizens also. Without knowledge of history, especially social history and civics, of the life of the past leading up to the present, its successes and failures, struggles and experiments, no one can tftke a very valuable part in the making' of history, which is woven out of present-day citii zenship and politics. Another proper aim of education is happiness and content; and here appreciation of literature; enters. There is a better and more fruitful kind of happiness in the imagination and wisdom of the great writers than in horseracing. Literature embodies all the ifinest thought that has been recorded, but if education stops too early, this literature is a meaningless wilderness, a dreary waste. There are other purposes of education which these subjects and others subserve. Utility is the least and lowest; training solely in the three R's turns youths into inadequate machines. A true conservatism in education aims at preserving all that is worthy that has been achieved, not at-reducing our people to an ignorant level of. serfdom. Does' "Sanity in Education' really believe that the one purpose of life is the making of money; that anything that helps to make life many-sided, that giv'es insight into the nature of this world {on other than its business side), that gives enjoyment, that makes good citizens, is "waste of time 1" M. Irvine.