The Christchurch Star. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1929. SURE FOUNDATIONS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18947, 18 December 1929, Page 8

The Christchurch Star. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1929. SURE FOUNDATIONS.

IN THIS AGE of the dissipated mind, it is reassuring to hear our educationalists stressing the necessity of building sure foundations before we place thereon the superstructure of the purely utilitarian. The Rev E. C. Crosse, headmaster of Christ’s College, said this week that what mattered was not that a boy should have learned at school all the information he required—that was impossible—but that he should have fashioned the weapon of his mind so that it could hope to do its work properly. But not only should the mind be trained to do the work required of it in the hours of labour for material things; it should be trained to the true use of leisure as well as of work. The student should be taught how to live. The right use of leisure is the test of education. Education should have its basis in a sound classical and scientific training, which must be a dependable background for the proper treatment of whatever technical subjects the student may take up afterwards. It would mean an enlarging of his leisure hours, and the adornment of his life. It is dangerous to attempt to give the young those superficial twists to direct their lives into stereotyped channels; but establish in their minds fundamental principles first and let the rest follow. For the aim of education should be to develop, as Emerson says, “ that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future.” THE MAYOR’S METAPHOR. A S THE MAYOR SAID in an appropriate figure of speech last night, the joy ride in the old municipal market bus was quite an unexpected feature of the City Council’s meeting. Everybody thought that this ancient vehicle of debate was on the scrap heap, and it is not surprising to learn from Councillor Beanland that the market is likely to be closed in the New Year. These facts in themselves are a very complete reply to Councillor D. G. Sullivan’s misleading claim that “ since the sale of the property there has been practically no criticism of the market, showing that earlier criticism was directed not against the market but against public enterprise.” Councillor Sullivan is in error all along the line. The market was criticised because it was a travesty on municipal trading, or on municipal markets as they ought to be conducted, and so far from there being no criticism of the continuance of the market after the sale of the property, the “ Star ” gave voice to a vary general feeling at the time that a condition of the sale should have been the closing of the market. Indeed, an agitation in this direction would have been launched but for the fact that everybody knew that the purchasers were not insane enough to go on with such a crazy project. “ A MESSAGE TO GARCIA.” MAN whose wife and family were in the wreck of the Manuka put in a telegram at Christchurch yesterday addressed to his wife on the relief train for the Manuka’s passengers. Back it came, with an official request for the particular railway station it was to be sent to. Fortunately by that time the husband had heard of Owaka, and the anxieties of the Post and Telegraph Department were duly relieved. But it started a train of thought. Was this in consonance with that zeal which we were once proud to think animated the Postal and Telegraphic servants of the public to carry “a message to Garcia,” as the late Elbert Hubbard put it? General Garcia was in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba when war broke out, and no mail or telegram could reach him. But there was “ a fellow by the name of Rowan ” who found him and, by the Eternal, said Hubbard, there was a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book learning young men need, he wrote, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do the thing—“ carry a message to Garcia.” • General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. And that man’s wife was one of them.