NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19416, 26 August 1926, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

EDUCATION IN PEACEFULNESS.

The idea that teachers, by-reason of .their detachment and their opportunities?; may advance the cause of peace by cub tivating the attitude of the "international mind," was examined in addresses at a conference of education associations in Edinburgh, a report of which we recently published.. "We are told with; some truth that we teachers are shutwithin the walls of school and college, dreaming fantastic visions of peace and brotherhood, while our fellow-men outside have to fight for their living," said Professor J. J. Findlay. "We must admit the strength of this criticism; we must acknowledge that! the real forces that lead men to fight and destroy each other, whether within the nation itself or in international affairs, spring from competition for wealth and for all that wealth denotes. . . It is well that the leaders of industry, in both camps, employers and employed, should realise where the teacher stands over against demands that he should train the young to animosity in those competitive wars of industry which seem to have succeeded to the open warfare of 1914 to 1918. I am confident that the great body of teachers, in every nation under the sun, are, by the very conditions of their employment, on the side of industrial peace. Wo live in a cloistered world where competition for riches has no place, in a society of young people among whom the bitterness of industrial rivalry is only hearsay; We ourselves cannot grow wealthy, even if that were our ambition;'-: Wo love our nation and with the rest of our countrymen deplore the misfortuues that in these days have befallen so many—misfortunes which indeed are seldom far from our personal experience. With the best will in the world we cannot throw our weight on the side of those who foment jealousies end quarrels whether at, home or abroad in manufacture and trade."

I-lIGKBROWS AND. LOWBROWS. .. "The highbrow must remain a highbrow till the claims of intellect are acknowledged. He is supposed to be a lover of what is austere, intricate, difficult, and alien. Yet the thing that chiefly distinguishes him from the lowbrow is his love of what is elemental, si e, and native," says Mr. William Po .»»«%■ in the Glasgow Herald. "It is the highbrows who patronise the drama that deals simply and truthfully with, elemental things and native themes; the" others must have elaborate settings, brilliant dresses, a beauty chorus, a big hand, and the latest London or New York success. The highbrow's ideal of a holiday is to walk amid beautiful scenery, and put up at cottages or modest inns; the lowbrow is not to be tempted into the wii.ds unless by a motor-car, golf, and swagger hotels. It is the Llghbrow who contents himself with Nature's pageantry and music while the others ■ire looking at an American film-drama or ' listening-in ' to the Savoy Orchestra. The explanation of all this, I fancy, is that primitive or all-agricultural peoples, .being close to the eternal and elemental realities, appreciate and spontaneously produce art of a simple but fundamental kind, whereas people who are detachel from those realities want something which >s artificial, ready-made, and : :eretricious, and does not touch real life at any point. For people who are imprisoned in an artificial and mechanical environment, there is only one door of escape. Only thorough art and intellect can they work their way back to the simple elemental . which tba crowd disdains,"