NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21910, 20 September 1934, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

TEACHING CITIZENSHIP An article in the Times Educational Supplement on "Citizenship as a School Subject" says:—lt is easy to say that children should be taught "to think clearly and to love freedom," but it is extremely difficult to give this teaching in the atmosphere of the classroom, where, of necessity, modes of thinking are to some extent prescribed and freedom is limited. It may be suggested that the association might undertake as its first task a clear definition of the term "citizenship," distinguishing the good form from the bad and making some effort to explain how the qualities of good citizenship may be fostered in schools and colleges by indirect as well as by direct instruction. It may be found that the essence of good citizenship lies in a sense of justice or fair play, and this attribute may be cultivated not only in the classroom, but in the playground, by means of ordinary exerciser and studies. As for clear thinking, there is a saying that one of the most desirable results of education 58 that it should enable a man to distinguish between a fact and a hypothesis, but this ability will be found to depend greatly on the amount of knowledge which lies behind it. Thus a mathematician may be able to think clearly on all that relates to mathematics, but he may be considerably befogged when he comes to consider history or economics. If, oi} the other hand, his education has done something to reveal to him the methods by which safe conclusions can be reached, he has a power of general utility and may be expected to pause before he accepts without criticism any statement, however plausible. PRACTICE AND THEORY

If, concludes the article, the work of the school can be so arranged that in all its parts it provides opportunities for rehearsing the practice of good citizenship, direct instruction may safely be postponed until the later 'teens, when the study of constitutional law and history may be embarked on as a means of showing how the relations between the State and the individual have developed in this country. Democracy cannot be the living and developing force which one association seems to desire unless our young people have a clear conception of these relations. If they are taught to think of the State as an abstract thing holding the individual in thrall the way is paved for dictatorship. If they are taught to think of it as an instrument devised and modified with the consent of the governed it is no longer an abstraction, but an instrument for ensuring justice. This conception can be brought home even to young children if those who teach them will encourage the practice of discussion in those school concerns in which it is appropriate. At this stage it is the practice that matters rather than the theory, and to many teachers it will seem that good citizenship is best inculcated by treating the school as a practising ground for civic virtues in miniature, leaving formal teaching to be given at the stage when it can be received with interest and intelligent grasp.

THE LAW AND LIBERTY Mr. Dingle Foot, M.P., addressing the Liberal Summer School at Oxford, said that constant supervision by Parliament of those engaged in administration, and the rule of law, were bulwarks of British liberty. Both had been considerably weakened in the last few years and was in great danger at present. Mr. Foot, who was speaking oh "The Remains of British Liberty," said the main business of Parliament was not legislation, but the raising of grievances. The ordinary member of Parliament could not possibly be as expert as advisers of the Government, but he knew far better than they did where the shoe pinched. As a general rule when a Minister made an order in pursuance of a statute the Courts determined whether or not that order was ultra vires. But there was growing up a tendency to insert a claupe which ousted the jurisdiction of the Courts. This meant that the Minister might do something which was ultra vires and illegal, and as long as he purported to act in. pursuance of an Act of Parliament no one had any redress. They had also in certain statutes conferred on Government departments the power to modify or unmake a statute. It was useless to provide against maladministration of their laws if those laws in themselves were subversive of liberty. There should be an association of people to defend the liberties of the subject, and he suggested that it should be done either by the Liberal Party or by a Liberal alliance comprising all the Liberal elements in the community.

"THE GROOVES OF CHANGE" Sir Percy Nunn, who spoke on "The Grooves of Change" at a Yorkshire vacation course in education, said that an intelligent reader lighting upon "Locksley Hall" without previous knowledge of the poem or its author would hardly guess that it was written nearly a century ago. Tennyson was, in fact, so true a prophet of the coming age as to be, even now, uncannily up to date. He perceived both that modern life would be transformed by the boundless achievements of scientific discovery, and also that it was doomed to be perplexed, confused and weakened by a conflict between the triumphant principles of science and man's cherished dreams of spiritual freedom. The life of nations was highly complex, and to analyso it into a few factors might be very misleading. Yet the fundamental disharmony which Tenyyson's prescience foresaw was undoubtedly one of the major causes of the world's present troubles. It would be instructive to study the two contradictory master-principles of the modern European movement in their influence upon public education. Up to a certain point they had conspired to bring about immense progress. Modern industry, the child of science, demanded an instructed rank and file of workers; the modern State, largely the product and the reflection of modern industry, must have instructed citizens. Hence public education had been drivon irresistibly down the "grooves of change," ever widening its aims and elaborating its organisation. In that way the schools had been increasingly prepared to become something better than mere instruments for conveying instruction to the mass of the people; they had spread far and wide that liberation and training of the higher human powers, which was the essence of education, rightly so called.