IN RE-EDUCATION (SO CALLED)

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 241, 12 October 1931, Page 6

IN RE-EDUCATION (SO CALLED)

Sir,—On August 2, of last year I wrote tho following letter which was published in the “Chronicle” The present interest in matters educational I suggest merits its reproduction. The letter reads thus:—l note that the Farmers’ Union advocates more money being spent on education and that Mr. Atmore is being eulogised for his report. A friend, whose opinion and judgment I value more than I do those of the Minister of Education, in speaking of the report over the telephone expressed the view that the extension of the school age was beneficial. I disagree with the opinions of all these gentlemen regarding education (so called). Why is it not called ‘schooling’ or ‘ top-dressing 1’ For the reason that ‘education’ postulates that there is something to be led out, where in many cases there is nothing of any value. There is a writer (Mephistophcles) to the dairyman. He, I think, writes most wisely. In one of his articles he concludes with the following: “It behoves us to educate our great national asset —our children—to the benefits that will accrue to them from the development through work of our wonderfully rich and fertile country. Loafers and wasters are the product of our educational system, and there arc too many of them in New Zealand.” Your intelligent readers will remember and agree with what Alexander Pope said: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep or taste not the Pierian (Spring.” Then Samuel Butler said:— “Man has a natural desire to know; But th’ one half is for interest, th’ other half show.” Again there is a proverb: “Learning makes the wise wiser; but the fool more foolish.” Wh} should schooling be “Free, secular and compulsory!” That it should be compulsory up to the fourth standard I agree; but, on the principle that we value at nothing that which we get for nothing, I submit that it should not be free excepting where the parents are unable to pay, and if essential, the parents could get an exemption certificate (which would be issued by and known only to the officer who duty it was to furnish all certificates to the pupils for presentation to the teachers of the State school). The able, the inustrious and thrifty pay for the schooling of most of the children in New Zealand. The cost of education (socalled), exceeds the amount of income tax collected in New Zealand. As “Old Pybus’’ says: “Why should the unfit and the futile be cherished at the expense of the fit and the free!” I think that every scholar, by means of bursaries or scholarships should earn his secondary education. Every scholar who does so is an asset to the State and should be assisted by the State to the utmost. It seems to me that most folk mistake education for intelligence and that all men are equal. There is no greater fallacy. “There is, in fact, no such word as ‘equality’ in Nature’s lexicon. With an increasingly uneven hand she distributes health, beauty, vigour, intelligence, genius—all the qualities which confer on their possessors superiority over their fellows.” An American writer, a Harvard graduate, in writing of the correlation between intelligence and racial origin, has drawn tables showing (a) the percentage of inferiority and (b) the percentage of superiority as it obtains in the U.S.A. They are as under:— Percentage of Inferiority. Country of Birth Per Cent. England t , .. 8.7 Holland 9.2 Denmark 13.4 Scotland 13.6 Germany . . J 5.0 Sweden 19.4 Canada 19.5 Belgium 24.0 Norway 25.6 Austria 37,5 Ireland 39.4 Turkey , .. 42.0 Greece 43.6 Russia 60.4 Italy 63.4 Poland f ~ .. 69.9 Percentage of Superiority. Country of Birth Per Cent. England .19.7 . Scotland .. 13.0 Holland .. JO." Canada 10.5 Germany 8.3 Denmark .. 5.4 Sweden .. 4.3 Norway 44 Ireland 4.1 Turkey 3.4 Austria 3.4 Russia 2.7 Greece 2.1 Italy Belgium ,s Poland ,5 He goes on to say: “Let us ones more recall the distinction between “intelligence” and “knowledge;’’ “intelligence” being the capacity of tho mind, “knowledge” the filling of the mind Let us also remember the

true meaning of the word “education” —a “bringing forth” of that which potentially exists.” “How, for example, does equality of training or education affect individual achievement! The answer is another 1 striking proof of the power of heredity. Not only is such equality of conditions unable to level the inborn indifferences between individuals ;on the contrary, it increases the differences in results achieved. “Equalising practice s?ems to increase differences. The ’superior man seems to have got his superiority from his own nature rather than by superior advantages of the past, since, during a period of equal advantages tor *■ all, he increases hia lead.” As McDougall justly remarks, ‘ ‘ The higher the level of innate capacity, the more it is improved by education.” The biologist Humphrey, says, “It is folly to keep up the delustion that more democracy and more education will make over these ill-born into good citizens. Democracy was never intended fore degenerates.” . . . Meanwhile we invite social turmoil by advancing muddled notions of equality. IDemocracy, as we loosely idealise it nowadays is an overdrawn picture of earthly bliss, it stirs the little-trained to hope for an impossible levelling of human beings:” “The most we caa honestly expect to achieve is a fair levelling of opportunity.” Mr. Douglas Jerrold writes of Canon Donaldson and education as under: “The dangerous condition of muddleheadedness which is the intellectual hall-mark of our age is, we are glad to see, beginning to excite alarm in “advanced” circles. Canon Donald,son at Westminster Abbey last month warned his congregation that “the nations of this century wil Istand or fall by the intelligence of their people. He went on to say quite truly that much knowledge was worthless without wisdom and understanding. He did not, however, point the moral, which is indeed best left to those not committed to the dogmas of progressive politics. The fact remains that, if there is one assumption more essential than aay other to conventional democracy, it is precisely the assumption that intelligence can be manufactured by an automatic process called education. By increasing tho number of teachers, by raising the school age and by building schools we are at this moment engaged in expanding our intclligencc-manu-.. facturing plant.” “The moment is certainly a strange one for a prominent supporter of the Labour Party to choose for the pronouncement that knowledge is not wbdt ' is wanted and that intelligence cannot be manufactured. We do not ouxselves agree. Intelligence can be developed in whole classes and whole societies, bir. not by mass educilion. How 1 then cau it be done! The question demands consideration more than any other, and a little of the time wasted in Parliament in making the roads still more unsafe than they are to-day might well be devoted tc it. One thin can be said for a tiart. More will be done in a yea* by teaching people to respect intelligence in others than will be done in a generation by teaching them that they possess it already themselves, or that they can acquire r from books. The democracy of Athens learnt more from her buildings and her artists and her poets than the public schoolboys of Europe will ever learn from studying the writings of Plato and Aristitle. Au ago which ennobles vulgarity merely vulgarises nobility and an age which impoverishes culture cannot redress th® balance by endowing illiteracy with power and doling out a miserable hotch-potch of second-rate book knowledge. Great peoples are bred bv th® influence of great institutions and the example of great men and become wise only by learning their limitations and living with them. In stitutions which enable them to do so with dignity and self-respect can and do create intelligence. “Education,” as understood to<lay, is occupied i n denying those limirations wnhin which alone man can fruitfully use his intelligence, and so is destroying the value of such stock ol intelligence as we still possess ” Why should the school age be extonile‘l? If a scholar cannot pass th® fourth standard by the tim he is 11 or tho sixth when he is J 4 his time by being a ‘ sch ° ol ftnd he should be at work. Can you sav, Sir. fhr l °. ur ar ! lsan J ar e more efficient through their schooling, even if technical, than those of 50 years ago, or that those of the learned professions able than their P r o<lecessors'! ot, half a century ago! • fake our Primo Ministers. Hoiv many o f them had - university education. Certainly nono during the last 50 years How many Chief Justices had Mich! Sir Robert Stout had not. no. did Sir Charles Skerrett and our present Chief Justice can attribute to Ins heredity his success. ] am, etc ’ “BRUTUS-”’ J