PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20465, 9 July 1936, Page 4

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

“CAUSE OF COMMUNISM” Public schools were attacked for their Conservatism In the “Isis,” the Oxford Undergraduates’ paper recently, says the “Daily Telegraph.” Dealing with the “Red Flag” motion at the Union, Mr Keith Bryant, the editor, in a leading article, entitled “The Red Flag and the Public Schools," states that the public school system is the best possible forcing ground for communism and discontent with the present order of society. Freedom of thought is non-existent in the public school, he says. The system encourages the worship of athleticism for its own sake and, after five years of this atmosphere, those who arrive at Oxford bring" “a kind of exhibitionist fury” to a Union debate. “They determine to get their own back,” writes Mr Bryant. “They want to be different, always to back the losing side, to attack. “They set out fiercly to pillory anything with the least taint of Conservatism, and the cause of this revolutionary hysteria is the present educational system in our grand old public school. “Until the present system of education in the public schools is changed we shall continue to find those who escape trampling on the Union Jack and hating everything to do with their own country. “We are forced to the strange conclusion that it is in the interest of Conservatism that public schools should be destroyed before they turn loose too many bitter young Socialists and Communists.

“If the latter wish to make the country a Communist State they have only to insist that everyone is sent to a public school, and on the first night of the new regime flames will be seen rising from those centres of unenlightenment.”