NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21250, 2 August 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

ENGLISH SCHOOL TRADITION The 500 th anniversary of tho foundation of Sevenoaks School was attended by tho Archbishop of York, who said that England had the fullest and wholesomest educational tradition of any country, though they thought so little about it. The Scots were always telling them how well-edu-cated they wore, but he. did not believe their tradition really had so full a supply of all tho elements that really mattered as tho English tradition. Tho German tradition, great as it was, was very defective in comparison. Tho great tradition of English education was that fundamentally what mattered was the school itself rather than the, lessons given in classrooms; or, in other words, the fundamental issue was tho kind of person they were turning out, and whether or not he was a good member of society. The whole outlook of our ancient educational institutions, whether in schools or in tho two ancient universities, had been based upon that principle. They never thought of asking, first, concerning a school: who were the great scholars it had produced ? They wanted to know what kind of men it produced. Oxford University required as the great condition of receiving the stamp of its hall-mark, that one should be a member of its fellowship. It was subsequently interested that one should know a little, but it was not greatly interested that one should know much; but one must be a member of the fellowship. That principle had pervaded all the great schools that came down from the Middle Ages.

PARTY SYSTEM DENOUNCED The Bishop of Exeter, Lord William Cecil, replies with vigour- to criticism of a speech he made in Convocation and incidentally passes some severe strictures on Parliament. "I am at a loss to understand what some people think is the object of our debates in Convocation," he says. " I gather they would think the ideal debate would be when every Bishop agreed with all his brother Bishops. If deliberations have any vfclue at all, two things are quite evident. First, the debaters must be expected to differ in opinion, otherwise why should you have a debate ? Secondly, their differences of opinion should be stated with absolute frankness. Nothing would be so disastrous as if it could be said with even a vestige of truth ' We have heard the conventional opinions of the Bishops, but that gives ns no light as to what are their real opinions.' Alas, I am afraid that that is very much what is said of the members of Parliament. The party system has robbed that deliberative Chamber of much interest in its debates, and it is rapidly becoming merely the registry ofllce in which the party managers record their decisions, while the speeches are often only a method of dictating< to the constituents the defence for those decisions. Occasionally, as in our Prayer-book debates, the House of Commons is left free, when its pristine vigour at once returns to it, and with that vigour the interest of th.e debates and the influence of those debates in forming the public opinion of the country. I hope the day will be long distant before either Convocation or tbo Church Assembly tread that downward path which is leading the House of Commons into insignificance."

ROADING EXTRAVAGANCES Lord E. Percy, tho Unionist member for Hastings in " the House of Commons, delivered a broadside against tho Labour Party and tho extravagant roading policy in a recent speech in Parliament. Mr. M. Jones, a Labour member, had said that the economy policy of the Ministry of Transport was inimical to tho interests of individual workmen and, in tho long runj would prove so to thoso of tho community at large. The fetish of saving money on road development was directly responsible for increasing tho ranks of the unemployed. If there was a case at all for tho expenditure of public money on anything as a temporary expedient to rolievo unemployment thero was ono in connection ivth road development. It was falso economy to cut down road development expenditure. Lord Percy said that Mr. Jones' speech was a proof that tho Socialist policy of the future would bo no more carefully planned than the privato enterprise devolpment of the past, llis speech was exactly what any madcap, railway developer in tho "United States or Canada, in tho heyday of railway speculation 50, 60 or 70 years ago, might havo said. It was then impossible "to build too many railways in the United States, or too many transcontinental railways in Canada. Now they had Mr. Jones, speaking in tho name of national planning, going baldheaded for roads in precisely tho same way. Probably tho money already spent on arterial roads had been worth while, but, with all that justifiable development, wo had been squandering money by tho car-load on roads which had fulfilled no purpose but to facilitate tho joy-riding of tho upper and uppermiddle classes. The expenditure on roads was wholly beyond tho needs or the capacity of the country, and the time had come when we must plan through-arterial devolopmont suited to our economic needs, and ruthlessly abandon, or at any late postpone, all other road development..