WASTE OF SCHOOL TIME.

Southland Times, Issue 15017, 10 August 1901, Page 2

WASTE OF SCHOOL TIME.

There are some things outside the scope of the Commission that lie within that of the Education Department and the Government, — things too, worthy of their profoundest attention and serious regard. One thing we may mention, and to which also we have devoted some space on a former occasion, that is, the anomalous persistence in adhering to a tjystem of coinage, and weights and measures that should long since have been relegated to the limbs of all obsolete things. We say anomalous, because in everything else we are instant in taking advantage of every improvement that helps to economise time and labour. But in this, with all the complacency of sheer ignorance, we suffer a waste of energy to go on year after year, the prospect of its being otherwise apparently as remote as ever. Let anyone look at the absurd divisions and subdivisions of our weights and measures and coins, and the cumbrous operations in k a\\ calculations in which they are involved, and compare it with the extreme simplicity of the metric and decimal system, and he cannot but be amazed at the stolid indifference with which the thing is regarded, or that it should be found still surviving. As our chief inspector of schools pointed out some time ago, there is a waste of some three or four hours a week of the pupils' school time in mastering the

curabroua tables and the long and complicated operations attending the application and use of them — an absolutely usctasp and unnecessary waste of hours that might be employed in learning something; useful, and equal to throwing away a, year of the pupil's school life. And the waste is not ended with that. Tt is carried into every office and into every occupation where figures come in. Even the housekeeper, in testing and summing up her little bills, has reason to be i envious of the ease and simplicity with which her .sister in France can manage hers. Some years ago we introduced the metric system into our schools in orderto familiarise the rising generation with it a.s a thing on the eve of being initiated in practical life, and now we j have dropped it even there a.s a thing of no concern to this present genera tion. It is a hundred years since its invention and adoption by the French, and most countries of Europe have followed suit. The inconvenience of the transition is not worth speaking of. It would very soon cease to be felt. Sir J. G. Ward would well merit another step in the. list of honours if he should deliver our arithmetic and commercial intercourse from a useless drag. YOL'THFUL 31OKALITY There is another and much more important matter which receives less though it claims more attention than it has ever received bpfore. Tf by any ingenuity of the philanthropist or divine, or by any device of legislation, it can be achieved there is urgent need amongst our youths of a moral tone of a very different complexion from that which it wears now, arid no means should be thought unimportant that would help to promote that end. Pending agreement on the subject of invoking the Bible, it might be worth while to try what ail can be obtained from any other means at our disposal. Sins against the laws of health are those to which youth is most prone. The science of physiology is in itself a bible- -a revelation, wherein appear a miracle of structure passing wonder, adaptations and functions transcending in their wondrous working everything of which we have any example. The laws are laid down, obedience to which means a sound mind in a sound body, while to the violation of them penalties are attached with inexorable hand and without hope or possibility of exception. Youths of both sexes might be candidly and earnestly brought to know something about themselves, and led to respect and cherish their own bodies and re gard them as a sacred trust committed to their care by the All-wise. They might be led to conceive of the dread responsibility attaching to this trust, and how their own fate and that of others will be affected by the way they acquit themselves. If a judicious manual on physiology were specially prepared for the use of schools, with all the moral responsibility it suggests made apparent, it might become the means, with tho help of earnest persevering teachers, of inducing a more hopeful and healthier tone, and establishing a habitual attitude of resistance towards the allurements that are now so easily dominant Nothing should be left untried that has in it the promise of ameliorating the conditions that we know to exist. A convincing knowledge of Nature's purposes and of her beneficent though inflexible laws might well, at any rate, replace the almost utter ignorance and thoughtlessness in which our youth are now reared. There is nothing for which our country is now struggling half us valuable as the rearing of our children in ways of virtue ; nothing so well calculated to make the country prosperous and happy : nothing that has such a claim on the attention of our Legislature, and of that of all who stand in any relation to the young.