A POPULAR ILLUSION.

Southland Times, Issue 17305, 29 March 1913, Page 3

A POPULAR ILLUSION.

AN ARTICLE FOR TEACHERS. (From Our Lady Correspondent). LONDON, Feb. 14 th. Considering with some sadness, the fact that we still call things by all sorts of wrong and ridiculous names, understanding not in the least ourselves often what we mean—as when we pipe of “ladies" "gentlemen” "class distinctions” higher education” "the broad mind" “the weaker sex" "the masculine" or "feminine sense of honour” for Instance—it is perhaps small wonder that there are still such wicked ideas about the subject of education. It is not necessary that one go out and into the world to find how. small he is, though travel will give him_ wholesome reminders of the fact If he’s humble and intelligent enough, and that is worth much. But it Is assuredly necessary that he find how small he is. For that is the beginning of finding how big lie can be. in his worth at least. No one of any sense whatever is going to sit down to the fact that he’s on a level with the beasts that perish that know not the delicacies of algebra, the mysteries of chemistry and poetry and the alluring heights and depths of the knowledge that lies in books. Than travel,’ if it is attainable —T speak as a colonial abroad —no greater lamp In the path to understanding (for that, is It not, is what education should be?) but a necessity it is not. Rather a luxury. It would be useful to hear a eugenlst dilate on the effect of environment on brain culture. But he would want to do dogmatise on food and the family institution of the family whch prohibits a child from choosing his own creators and great grandparents and laws which won’t allow the wise scientist to take away from the unwise parents those individuals' human belongings. And we shouldn't get on with the main discussion which seeks to find out how large a part what passes for education —because it is the practical business of years-r-plays in our after life in increasing our value as citizens. Nevertheless, for one moment, it is interesting to digress and say that if environment, that Is of course, the surrounding of ones’ early days, has a direct result on the way one takes to education then those taught In New Zealand come Into the World, so to speak, with a silver spoon in their mouths, for they, at least, have abundance of fresh air, food. Independence, and always a background of glorious beauty of environment. There are Xew Zealand towns that not the most devoted patriots among us ought to admire, but there is no such thing as a town from which the child of fifteen could not walk away into the country, which would not be a possibility for a London child. Here, starting from London, an excursion that, with us at home, would be a mere walk assumes the dimensions of a picnic. Lady-like meadows and public gardens and Imitation ponds there are, but not hills, the sea, waterfalls, sweet rivers, bush and jolly “belts” smothered with gorse such as, one or all, may be had for the exertion In any part of the Dominion. WHAT ARE THE X. Z. CHARACTERISTICS. Then, eugenic theories hold we ought, all the New Zealand children with the undoubted school advantages we enjoy,—which note —to show clear original minds. Do we? The qualities necessary to prepare the mind for any enriching Influence are two. reverence and appreciation with, behind both, desire. Now it Is a fairly commonly asserted thing amongst wise people, no longer young, that the average young New Zealander is rather conspicuous for his lack of reverence. They find that, they say, in his attitude towards t his religion, his elders and the majority of established institutions. Far be it from me to bow to or disagree with the sages’ dictum since I am a New Zealander, to bo passed by some standards young. But it certainly Is said of us. , , Irreverence, let it be whispered by the way, has pno virtiire of its own. At least it is positive,- a foundation for a teacher to work on, and it is a strain willi well defined uses in New Zealand life. ‘' And one now comes to the teacher and realises that every letter in the word ought to' be' written a capital. For wc get away from the primary things in our jater. clever day, browse on our own account and even make assertions in a assCritive time, but we never really loose- -the knowledge that our earliest impressions of learning circle round our first teachers, by whom certain ideas were either fostered or squashed. Before that, being imitative little animals, we knew our world according to our circumstances, through minds steeped in the high and unapproachable romance of faerie lore, perhaps through severely critical precocious eyes (our parents') or in the terms of the future, viz, what we meant to do. Then arrived the teacher —the person on an entirely different footing from a father, mother, servant, or playfellow, and the director of a sort of expert finger that made a beeline for this or that spot in a sensitive brain and said with no delicate compunction or hesitancy "You’re wrong" or "you’re right" or "good’ ••■.bad", "disgraceful”, “excellent” as the case might be. If you were In a good school you then began to go on from there—lf in a senseless one you you began to go down from then for a few years. If in a good one you began to value the word counsellor, if in a stereotyped one to feel the chains of routine and tyranny. One is not sensible enough to realise the waste of beautiful time. THE INFERNAL MACHINE Looking on a school with eyes beyond school influences the wise outsider sees Into a huge well-worked machine into which arc thrown young intelligences to make their way out at Hie other end, if they are of the material to have stood the racket, as little damaged as possible. The average school this —even the eugenist, in whose veins runs red Ink, must acknowledge that parents are improving with the years. No longer is their talk of the ideal education exhausted when their first baby Is three months old and only put into practice when the last one Ui six or seven years! But. nevertheless, ever so much that is entirely wrong is still alive and kicking in our educational system. Only do we clutch, too often, at beautiful things to be actually taught to touch them, pull them to bits, sniff Into them, parse them, analyse them, alter them and throw them on one side for the next beautiful thing. How many grammar books bear derisive drawings to indicate the weary boredom with which we sot ourselves to the ugly task of criticising Shakespeare’s construction or St. Paul's letters? What do Macaulay’s essays moan to healthy school minds, or Ruskin’s thoughts, Carlyle’s thunderings, Addison’s stateliness and Charles Lamb's delicate observations but loathed tasks.? So with music, so with poetry. Fortunately art has a dominion of its own and won’t lie down to be mutilated so. And yet this machine lias its excellent points, for we still talk of discipline with it capital letter and are thankful for its existence. And it’s as well to be mixed up with the lightness of schooldays, for it has to come later and '.falls hardly then. Every school is a world, every teacher a king or a king’s official, every misdemeanour brings its own reward and quite often a good act goes unrecognised. Just like Hie world outside. Sometimes a thought does steal into the intelligent mind; even in the greedy remcmhranco of prizes striving is good for its own sake —-anything else "goes less” than that. How hateful to contemplate is the mind of a doctor who dislikes his work, and that not only on his own account, hut because lie may kill the body of of his patient perhaps quite quickly. But the teacher who hates work kills > minds and sometimes slowly. And a

mind, even any mind, is like the crescent ripple made by a stone in the.sea that goes on and on and: never stops till the end of the sea. It is more amusing than elevating to talk to people about their schooldays and find how much remains of flic hotchpotch then imparled them. "Baibas built a wall”, "the gloves of the baker’s mother," "Hebe”—and so are three tongues disposed of; simple equations express algebra: Landseer was an artist who painted animals; Marlowe, Johnson, lingers, Richardson, Sterne —all merely in the hotchpotch: Christopher Columbus discovered America, Lessepps had something to do with the Seuz Canal: fortunately Henry the Eighth’s matrimonial miventuros wore uiiiQuo In history. Queen Anno ami file Duchess of ‘Marlborough hated each other, Alfred the Great was a learned and unusual child and burned a batch of cakes later, and received what kings don t often get an honest opinion of his carelessness; we should not keep growing plants in our bedrooms because it. is a fight aa to who has the best of the fresh air and the plant may win (physiology). And so on—physical geography, onclid, geometry. Anglo-Saxon, physics, botany, zoology, biology, and —oh most grievous sin of all—Literature. Robert Hugh Benson, the writer, in a, series of articles on the artificiality of Eton’s education, published recently, remembers that lie took special course in French but only remembers of that, that Le Saint Esprit is not The Holy Spirit though what is he’s never been able to find out! Very little can a teacher do, after all, yet more in Ills way than any other living being, perhaps, for he holds the key to many a problem that will come up for all his pupils. A|l he can really do is to set minds working on their own accounts. By the way lie opens golden doors, though. But only when he knows them to be gold himself.