BRAIN V. BRAIN.

Observer, Volume XXXIX, Issue 43, 28 June 1919, Page 3

BRAIN V. BRAIN.

The Fight of the Future.

NEW ZEALAND is prosperous because she has specialised in a few branches of industry. There never yet was a prosperous "jack of all trades." New Zealand will probably remain prosperous with the advance of specialised education — " teaching the individual all he can i be made to assimilate of the business '■ which he is to make his life work, f The primary school education of New .Zealand children is always being criticised, and one supposes this shows a real desire to make it more -effective. A people who were not ambitious would be content. Ambition is always progress. One of the chief reasons for the belief that the New Zealand primary education system is a good basis, is that New Zealand school children love school. One does not remember that children loved school when one was a child.

The "Rights of Childhood League" lately initiated by enthusiastic and earnest people, seeks by stirring public opinion to demand by united action the best education and the best health of the scholars- One speaker lately said that education was allowed to languish as compared with industrial development, although if he thought about it afterwards he must have known that industrial development always synchronises with education. Most people in most countries receive their real education after they leave school. Education is mostly by haphazard. "Only half the children who start together in the infant classes ever passed the Sixth Standard." That means, of course, that it has become necessary for such children to begin to earn a part of their own living—in fact, that it is time for them to begin their real education. This does not even prove a weakness in the system, but may prove a weakness in the children. The fact that one child is unable to pass his school exams, while another passes with flying colours is no proof of superiority of brain in the more successful scholar. No two persons Are alike.

In most new countries the worker of any class rarely takes up the profession he is best fitted for when he leaves school. It is most rare to find a man either successful or unsuccessful who has not tried many avocations, and it would appear to be one of the impossibilities to determine before a child left school his niche in the industrial structure. One fact is certain. The prosperity

of the community rests on the ability of the individual to specialise. The success of the New Zealand butter business is not due to Sixth Standard passes, but to specialised education, acquired by experience. This is equally true of all our staple industries. The "best educated" men in the community, from the scholastic point of view, are those who impart their memorised information to imitators, but the real education is that that is applied to the health, wealth, and prosperity of the whole community.

Many of the most prosperous men in New Zealand have received no schooling at all. This is not an argument against schooling; it is an argument for specialisation. New Zealand people are beginning to understand that in a world of commercial war Aye cannot blunder along in a haphazard fashion, and that the country containing the most experts in essential occupations will be the country with most trade and most comfort. All real education has been imparted by imaginative people, the restless souls, the great inventors —the profound specialistsSchooling is only an incident in the scholar's ultimate vocation, and standardised schooling, necessary as it is, is only the basis on which education is reared.

The necessity of real everyday applicable knowledge is recognised in the Vocational Training Scheme inaugurated by the Defence Department for ex-soldiers. The point, of course, is that we as a nation are up against countries much more highly skilled than ourselves, but certainly not more susceptible to training. It has everywhere been noted that the New Zealander is an apt pupil with his mind well open. This was remarkably proVed both in the Navy and Army. Young New Zealanders in the special branches of Navy work easily beat all comers in the speed with which they assimilated technical and practical knowledge, but they did not, of course, succeed merely because they had passed the Fifth or Sixth Standard. The foundation of the ability to grasp essentials may have been laid in the primary schools of New Zealand, but most probably the foundation was in the bodies and minds of the students.

Re-education —specialisation— has remarkable success among the peopl* of a new country, particularly where the natural "bent" of the individual is discovered, and one has no doubt whatever that the special training in vocations new or old, to be given to soldiers, will awaken many fine imaginations, and ultimately do great good to the country.

Tens of thousands of bright young New Zealanders leave school and enter "cul-de-sac" employment as a temporary necessity of life. This is incapable of alteration, but real education only then begins, and it is real education for the real things of life that should claim the attention of the State, and all leagues and branches earnestly endeavouring to bring the people abreast of the time. The old world has taken a remarkable jump during the past five years. New Zealand hasn't taken the jump in art, literature, science, and invention, not because she is incapable, but because she lacks internal training.

The young New Zealander with a hankering after specialty must leave the country to gain it. This is only due to the youth of the country and the necessity for immediate utility. The boy may be going to be a great engineer someday. Nobody at school knows he is going to be a great engineer, -and he quite possibly starts commercial life as a parcel carrier or an office boy. As a matter of experience, the individual generally finds the niche he is best fitted for sooner or later. The real business of education is to feresee the niche, and to put the youngster in it as soon as possible, for the war of the future is Brains versus Brains.