BRAND OF FAILURE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19512, 10 June 1933, Page 18

BRAND OF FAILURE

SOCIETY AND EDUCATION.. IN WORLD OF PLENTY. “In our day of unparalleled learning. in our day of unequalled opportunity for training the intellect, in our day so replete with colleges and universities of every sort and kind,” said the Rev. Father J. Higgins. S.M.. vicerector of St. Patrick’s College, in an address at St. Bede's College, Christchurch, “we are facing the threatened collapse of our civilisation and grappling with the fearful problems involved in the unemployment of millions of able men. We are face to face with the ghastly, the unspeakable social crime of want, hunger, and misery in a world of plenty. In our days so magnificent with the fruits of benevolent science, so luxurious in a thousand gifts from the advance of knowledge, and so efficient in the control and use of the powers of nature, we are facing a crisis that is the evidence of our failure to solve the fundamental problem of social life. Cannot Escape Blame. “Society is branded and earmarked with failure, and our experts, our men of wondrous learning, of mighty mental efficiency, do not know what to do. The fact is that education has failed and failed miserably; and school and college and university cannot too plainly hear the charge; they cannot escape their blame, the large share of guilt in the misfortunes that torture the world to-day. If education has failed, as indeed it has. how are we to account for the failure? Certainly not for the want of teachers, material, or money. “Modern psychology without a soul has robbed education of true understanding of human nature. To teach without securing due control of the human heart is not only an incomplete work, it is highly dangerous. As the Duke of Wellington said, education without God means the training of clever devils. For the heart affects the head; man’s desires colour his thoughts; his sentiments, his emotions in very much decide not only his point of view, but even his power to realise the true meaning and significance of what he learns. The Evil Heart. "There are many men who have learned many things, but yet who do not know the truth about these things. An evil heart will distort our power to appreciate correctly what we learn. An evil heart need not be positively engrossed in immortality; a heart undisciplined is evil; a heart selfish with the disgusting selfishness that has maimed and marred and mauled our day is evil. “Evil is the heart grossly indifferent to the welfare of others, and from the ignoble heart of man comes the failure in which education has her grim share of guilt. Of course, the case is worse when in a heart there is positive vice, deliberate in some way or other; the vice will prevent the mind from seeing the truth. You can pour knowledge into a mind, you can produce men of learning, you can beget men of skill in the use of knowledge. but the work of our education will be in vain unless we .produce men of sound, clean, and noble hearts. “Fundamental Mistake.” “It is useless to argue that education is not to do the work of relig.-on, and that schools are not churches, teachers not clergymen. There is no question of turning schools into churches and teachers into priests. It is the function of education first to depend upon, and next to supj>ort. religion. And it has been a fundamental mistake for education to deem herself independent of religion, for that means that education is independent of God. And nothing of human value can be truly appreciated, unless first and foremost seen in the light of man’s dependence of God. "