WHO IS EDUCATED?

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6604, 26 May 1925, Page 7

WHO IS EDUCATED?

“In his very interesting address at the Educational Institute Congress in Edinburgh, Sir Robert Blair asked for general assent to the proposition that a people should not be called educated until three generations of the whole population had passed through the schools of a national system,” says the Glasgow Herald. “Our assent is modified by several considerations. There is something in the idea of primitive freshness of the brain. Some of the ablest men that Scotland has produced have sprung from a lowly and ignorant stock, and have been the first of their race to receive any education at all. Is a family which has been educated under a national system for three generations likely to produce a Telford ?

“And is it to educate a whole population, or even a majority of it? Educational tests applied in war time in Britain, America, France, and even Germany showed that school instruction passes over the heads of about 40 per cent, or more of the scholars—-for mere ability to read sporting news and make elementary (and erroneous) financial calculations thereon does not constitute education.”