Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1910. EDUCATION AND SOCIAL INTERCOURSE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXII, Issue 9628, 17 March 1910, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1910. EDUCATION AND SOCIAL INTERCOURSE.

Education has hitherto been the promoter of social intercourse. The better read people were, tho more common ground they had on which to meet their fellows, aud classical learniug was distinctly provocative of conversation. Tie "Noctes Ambrosiaiiae" wece typical of the delightful symposia that men who loved tha " humanities" used to enjoy. All these are doomed. The fiat is gone fortn. Handwork is to supersede Homer; table-legs aud mautel-sholves, chairs and cupboards are to engage the attention of youth ; and the horn of manual labour is to be exalted. So intensely practical are we to become that we shall have no time for the poetry, the arts and graces of life. Human intercourse, through people having no common basis of argument aud no inspiration, will languish aud become a very fiat aud stale and insipid affair. ludeed, the dawn of this new era is already beginning to appear. Social intercourse now-a-days is the hollowest pretence, a mere phantom of a once delightful substance. The gradual declension of home-life, the increasing hollowness of social intercourse, the decay of classical learning, the dead precision of everything, and, to crown all, the changed attitude aud the menace of Woman, all these things are forerunners of au entirely new era. The tendency of education is certainly to isolate men; yet the natural human instinct is a gregarious one. How, then, will the natural instinct be satisfied under this handicap? True sanity consists (we are taught to believe) in the equipoise of body, sou aud mind. To-day both mind and body are receiving perhaps too solicitous treatment; but the inner something, the essence of being, still craves nutriment, aud seeks it in all sorts of by-paths. Hence the various crazes, from Theosophy to Sanitation. We fear education still lacks an essential element.-