BOYS AND GIRLS AND PEACE

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17246, 5 November 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

BOYS AND GIRLS AND PEACE

LESSONS ON THE LEAGUE. (By “Dominie.”) The proposals outlined below, which are the result of an important conference of educational authorities quietly and sanely announced, may have far-reaching results. There are many who think that it is the biggest event of the year, although the newspapers have not devoted big spaces to it.

Nine associations of headmasters and teachers and the League of Nations Union at a conference convened recently by the British Board of Education, presented a Memorandum urging the importance of the boys and girls in the schools being taught the principles and objects of''Hie League of Nations. This Memorandum, it is hoped, will be discussed by the various educational authorities up and down the country, and this first step, it is expected, will be followed by tiic various authorities accepting the principle of the Memorandum, though different localities may vary their methods of interpreting the scheme. The main points of the Memorandum are given below—and it is likely to prove one of the most historic documents in the annals of educational history. Amongst other things the memorandum states:—

Concerns Every Boy and Girl. “The future of international relations closely concerns every boy and girl in the modern world. Until the reign of law", to which we are accustomed in our own country, is established throughout the whole Great Society of interdependent nations, man’s work and highest endeavour may be rendered futile by the folly of war; and human life becomes again cheap and purposeless. “But Governments alone cannot establish the reign of law throughout the world. That can only be done when the public opinion of this and other democratic countries understands the need for the world-wide reign of law and insistently demands that it he established and maintained by the several Governments co-ope-rating in the League of Nations. “Knowledge which leads to these results is practically useful to individual citizens, lo their countries, and lo the world. On the other hand, no citizen can be expected to think or act reasonably on questions of foreign policy if lie knows' nothing of the growth of international interdependence during the last hundred years, or of his country’s unprecedented obligations under the League’s Covenant. “To think and act as if things were not what they are generally leads to trouble; and the young people of todav may lose civilisation itself il they grow up to think of the modern world as if it were the world of their grandfathers, of international anarchy between sovereign slates, or of the history books that end with 1914. “Moreover, this new knowledge, properly taught, provides a strenuous intellectual discipline just because it links up so many oilier studies. “We do not, however, recommend a separate place in the timetable loi it. We prefer lo see it taught in connection with existing studies in schools of all types. The Universities and the Training Colleges should prepare future teachers for this task. Meanwhile, unwilling or uninterested masters and mistresses must not be entrusted with presenting the new material until their own interest lias first been arfhised by conferences with expert authorities, or by short courses of training at summer schools. When History and Geography are Taught.

“Where the teachers understand the facts in question, realise their importance, and are eager to teach Ihcrn, most will be taught in history lessons. The history of England, or of Scotland, will then be presented in its proper relation to the history" of the world* Only so can British children fully appreciate the League of Nations as a fruit long ripened on the tree of time.

“Particularly in the teaching of modern history ‘the growing sense of the interdependence of communities, as shown, for example, in the work of ihe League of Nations, should receive due prominence,’ lo quote Ihe Consultative Committee of the Board of Education in their recent, report on ‘The Education of the Adolescent.’ “Pupils should be led lo realise the conditions of life, as well of individuals as of communities, among ihe nations of the world, and especially among those peoples with whom we in Great Britain have most in common; and proper emphasis should be laid upon the economic interdependence of the Great Society, now almost worldwide, of which we form part. “The body of knowledge with which we are concerned extends beyond history and geography to all the subjects taught in school. Thus % tor example, all the elements of our English speech, like all the of our blood, come from abroad. Our modern science is international in origin. And so with art: the great styles of English architecture—Saxon, Norman, Gothic and Renaissance—jail come from overseas, they are little chips of the great European block. World Citizenship Has to be Created. “We are naturally averse from any sentimental appeal in school and from anv obvious attempt to stir the emotions of the pupils. Yet we recognise that new knowledge alone, without some change of feeling and of purpose, will not suffice to make international co-operation the normal method of conducting world affans. A sense of world citizenship has to he created. ~ .. “President Wilson, told a committee at the Paris Peace Conference that ‘he looked forward to the time when men would be as ashamed oi bein p disloyal to humanity as they werenow of being disloyal to their country. For the Englishman, for the Briton, for any citizen of the British Commonwealth —itself a model League ot Nations —there can be no reason why the union of nations and the building of larger loyalties out oi presen patriotisms should not keep pace with the widening of individual human interests to cover the whole shrinking world. Disloyalty to the whole involves disloyalty to every part, including one’s own State. “Along with the change of feeling towards this wider loyalty, we want to see a change of purpose: a will o see first the welfare of the woildwido society of mankind."