EDUCATIONAL NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15335, 8 September 1923, Page 11 (Supplement)

EDUCATIONAL NOTES.

A CRISIS IN WALES.

(By “Dominie.”)

“Economic forces have brought, or are rapidly bringing, Welsh Secondary and Higher Educalion to very inconvenient cross-roads,” says the Welsh Outlook. “The younger generation Is beginning to question and challenge the whole basis and construction ol' our national system of education in Wales. They declare that our secondary system, which we have been used on festive occasions to proclaim as ‘the finest in the world,’ was 100 much the creation of men who had heard a great deal about the English public schools, but knew very little at first hand about them, and, consequently, in their; efforts to copy them produced many of their vices but few of their virtues. As it is, with one or two exceptions, we have not good schools or great masters, and certainly not a Welsh system of secondary education. The same dissatisfaction is felt with our colleges and our University. For forty years we have been diligently copying our neighbours, never attempting to survey the actual situation in Wales and doing no original thinking on that basis. It is not strange therefore, that some of our best and shrewdest observers should be charging the University at this hour with laek of sympathy with, and understanding of, the national life and tradition. In fast we have produced a vocational and not a cultural system of elementary, secondary and higher education, and its evil consequences are to be discerned in every sphere of national -life. We are not at all sure that the intellectual standard of the country to-day is not lower than it was in the days when the Sunday School was practically the only educational institution in the land. The real problem for Welsh educationists at the moment is how to deal with this situation, and even financial issues depend ultimately on its proper solution. i EDUCATION A CURSE? Lady Astor, M.P., presided at a debate at the London School of Economics, arranged by the Oxford and Cambridge University Union Societies, on the motion “That Education is the Curse of the Country." The debate was the last of a series of discussions held at the school to raise money for the London voluntary hospitals.. Lady Astor said it was a serious thing for overburdened mothers to have to keep their children at home and let them grow up as they willed. She was at any rate anxious that her children should do better than she had done. She belonged to a generation when it was hardly considered necessary for young ladies to be educated. Personally she had found it a handicap to be semi-educated. (Laughter.) Mr H. 11. Bernays, .of Worcester College, Oxford, submitting “That Education is the Curse of the Country," claimed that in the elementary schools the classes were too large and the curriculum too wide. His criticism of the public schools was that they set up a wrong standard of values. Our Educational system was on a class basis, it was the medium of class prejudice and the recruiting house of class hatred. They saw one of the results of this education in the Press. Forty years ago newspapers were written for the instruction of parents and not for the amusement' of children. He wondered if we were not coming to the time when the leading article in The Times would be written by Uncle Dick and that in the Morning Post signed by Aunt Molly. (Laughter). The cinemas, 100, nurtured an unhealthy taste for crime and cowboy films. Modern education had, in fact, vulgarised life. Mr C. 11. E. Smyth (of Corpus Christi Cpllege, Cambridge), who followed on the other side, observed that education had to be general In scope and method. It was more than mere teaching. The public schools did give something of*a general education, not only in knowledge, but in manners, and they did produce gentlemen. The mudslinging that had gone on against the public schools shoul bq stopped. Mr J. W. G. Sparrow ‘(Trinity Hall, Cambridge), speaking for the motion, said that only the mediocre derived benefit from our education. Education was supposed to lit a man for life. Yet rural an 1 urban education had no regard to future callings, and in the public schools Latin and Greek were taught before the slightest acquaintance with English. Education to-day was misdirected, and of all the curses the greatest was the misdirected blessing. Educalion was a dangerous curse; we had taught democracy to read but not to think. Mr Gerald Gardiner (Magdalen College, Oxford), opposing the motion, said that if education was knowledge it was utter nonsense to talk of it being the curse of the country. Mr J. D. Woodruff, ex-president of the Oxford Ui.ion (for the motion), contended that the great sacrifice in happiness involved in schooling was greater than any increased efficiency or desire to deal with current questions that might result from it. Big problems were before us, and to spend money on education while not tackling problems of the way to live (which would only make education of value; was to follow a hazy line of conduct.

Mr R. H. L. Slater, president of the Cambridge Union, said he refused to believe the country was suffering under any curse. Why this particular obsession about education? One might as well say that breathing the air was a curse. Education was really every man discovering himself, and it was no good calling it a curse, because it was a fact of nature and inevitable. On a voLc by show of hands Lady Astor declared that there were about fifty-Lwo for the motion and 104 against. Lady Astor observed that she had had strange thoughts as she had listened to these young men. They had shown her that our politicians were made in the universities, where they were taught to speak so glibly on anything. (Laughter.) It was a real menace to the country. Here' were brilliant young men not believing a word they said, and yet saying it with wit and charm. It made one feel a dread about the future of democracy. , (Laughter-^