EDUCATIONAL NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume 95, Issue 14949, 20 May 1922, Page 9 (Supplement)

EDUCATIONAL NOTES.

THE NEED OF THE WORLD.

(By “Dominie.”)

“We have learnt our need of education.” So say men from all over the world to Dr Jacks, the editor of the Hibbert Journal. Intellectual Discipline.

“England has always _ shrunk from the notion that education is to be found in schools and colleges alone, and in this persistent and obstinate conviction England has been right, says Sir Michael Sadler in the Observer. “But she has given too little thought to intellectual discipline. She has never realised the power of good teaching applied through a wellplanned system of schools to the whole of the rising generation. Now, at last, she has begun to value the side of education to which hitherto she has been comparatively indifferent, A new educational movement has begun in England. In it lies the certainty of future power. Will it not be wiser to welcome this new movement than to block and discourage it?

Give Education its Right Place. “The best social traditions in England are among our most precious national possessions; but they are threatened,” adds Sir Michael. “They are imperilled by economic changes which will destroy them, unless the English people concentrate themselves on the essential things for which each of those great traditions stands. This is a work of the mind as well as a work of the heart. It calls for intellectual insight as well as for loyalty. It can be achieved only by a generation which has been taught how to think clearly and bravely, to care for principles and to sacrifice present ease for the future. To Leach us how to do these tilings is the chief work of the education which England needs. If education is now given ils right place in our national life we shall have at our service the power which is needed to help England at one of the turning points in her history.”

Education of the Mind

Public opinion depended upon the mind, so that the mind of the people was a great subject,” said Lord Haldane at Dumfries. “Mind w’as produced mostly by education. The great bulk of the people depended upon education for the training of their mind. He was not sorry that the Gedde,s axe had been flourished in the air. It had called attention to education. It had set the people thinking about education as they had never thought before. The Geddes axe was flourished, He was deeply aware that economy was of vast importance. We were burdened with taxes; we were burdened with rates.

“The only way to reduce taxes and rates was by producing more, so that we might become more wealthy. What we wanted was freedom —freedom to develop—and the only way a nation could be free was to throw off the fetters of ignorance. Unless the people were educated the League of Nations, Free Trade, or anything else could accomplish nothing.”

Adult Education.

“Lord Haldane went on to deal with the advantages that would accrue if greater attention was paid to adult education, and urged that the means should be taken to make the best of the potential strength of the nation. We needed to enable the Universities to produce more University teachers, who could come forth and settle down in placds like Dumfries, and there make a centre of University life and spirit which would permeate the population. The effect of that would be to give every capable young man, any young woman, the opportunity to rise and they would get at a vast source of strength which the nation had not yet used. “It was one of the most pathetic things in the interests of the country as well as the people themselves to think of that vast reservoir of buried talents never brought to the surface because steps had never been taken to bring it to the surface, that embrace! the youth of the working classes, the boys and girls with a genius, which, if brought to light, would have given to the country more power, more credit, and more wealth, and which it was not easy to measure, because we had never taken any steps to make it available We could not get that without the extension of Die University teaching. There was a new career not only for the Universities, but for the schoolmaster." The Object of Education. Sir Henry Newboll, speaking to Essex teachers at Chelmsford, said we had come lo a point in the history of the world and of this nation when it was absolutely necessary to make a new departure. The old world was not only old, but broken, and what was wanted was something which would help to make this count, rv a new world. They had embodied in the report of the Departmental CommiLtce certain ideas —and they went a good deal further than the teaching of English—which were a contribution towards the making of a new world. “The real object of education was to teach everybody how to live as members of a human society, how to be worthy and useful members of society, and how Lo enjoy the life of that society. The art of living,” he continued, “is what we are out for. The imparting of information has little to do with the social life. All that is necessary in the way of information may he very well picked up by a child without going to school at all. Wo want experience—the richest and fullest experience which life can give us.”

“The attention that is paid to agricultural education in Japan at the present time is most remarkable,” said Mr G. 11. Opie, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Christchurch Technical College at the last meeting of the Board. “A recent that over a quarter of a million Japanese boys in their teens ar c receiving the same type of education as is given in New Zealand in the agricultural high schools. This attention to agriculture is similar to what is being given there in connection with trades, as Die aim of their educational authorities is now to provide a form of secohdary instruction, including the study of their own language, art subjects, mathematics and the sciences bearing on agriculture or one of the industries. This corresponds to the instruction given in our technical high schools.”