Musings and Meditations

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 16, 14 October 1908, Page 2

Musings and Meditations

By

Dog Toby

SECULAR EDUCATION.

TRUTH is said to lie at the bottom of a well. This, being interpreted, means that what is really and eternally true is seldom super-

ficially obvious. Ruskin says that the pleasure we find in our work, not the reward wo get for our work, alone brings happiness. This is so true that not one person in a hundred would believe it. St. Paul tells us that he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. All history, both of nations and individuals, has

proved this to be true since time began, but it is doubtful if one person in a thousand really believes it, and not one in ten thousand acts as if he believed it. Spiritual forces are greater than material, patriotism is more than big battalions. Love is more than gold, charity is mightier than the sword; even today the five barley loaves and two small fishes may feed the multitudes if they are miraculously multiplied as of old by being passed from brother to brother, and given in human fellowship and human love. We cannot read history, we cannot read life, we cannot read the human heart, without knowing that these things are true. But we go on believing in material things, we act as if material blessing was the only good; and from the material we reap corruption. <s><s>* You can never hope to convince the thousands of any truth that is vital to their welfare. The utmost you can hope for is to convince the hundreds at whose feet the thousands sit. Now, if there is one thing more true than another as regards education, it is tills, It doesn’t to much matter what number of things you teach child, but it does matter how yon teach them. It matters more what you teach a child to lie than what you teach it to do. You may teaeh a boy Greek, an utterly useless subject commercially, and if you teach Greek well you will have an educated man. On the other hand, you may teach a, boy French and German and Spanish, and if you teach them badly you will merely have produced one who can chatter like a courier in six languages. Why is it that the classical scholar is said to be highly educated, and the waiter who can talk a dozen lingoes is not? Simply because the one has been trained to think and the other to talk. <?><?>«> Of all things, you must train a hoy to be. character is more than all. It will not matter to him in after life whether he remembers the height of Mt. Everest or the length of the river Seine. It will matter to him whether he has learnt to do his duty to God and to his neighbour. There was deep wisdom In the reply a lad gave to a prospective employer, who asked how far away the moon was from the earth. Me replied that he hadn’t the faintest idea; all he knew was that it was sufileiratly far off not to interfere with his doing his duty if he got the post. Do any of us make any use of the mass of text book statistics with which pupils are crammed? Not one in a thousand even remembers them. But it is to be hoped that we do sometimes remember the words of truth learnt at our mother’s knee, and remembering them, they help to form our life. ❖ <S> That being so, do we act as being wise or as fools? It was recently proposed at the Wellington Board of Education that the ten commandments should be placed in our public ochool-s. The proposal was rejected on the ground that they were obsolete. The walls of our schools are better adorned with such information as that the "hog is on the log,” and ‘the hen has a pen.” If the masses think it is more educative for their children to read

day by day that the cat saw a rat, let them keep their rat, and let us hope that some day the cat will catch it and cat it. But the point is not what the masses want—the point is what men who believe in real education want, and what they are doing to get it. <s><£><?> UMrstians say they believe in God the Father Almighty, yet because it is cheap they send their children to schools controlled by a Board of men who denounce the Word of God as obsolete. It is useless to hope to get Bible-reading in State schools. The people don't want it. They want their childern taught the pure Englfe-h, that makes them say "I seen him done it,” and "Both of yens,” not the debased form of the English of the authorised version that formed the style of Bunyan and of Ruskin. Gerald Massey read the Bible and little else, and could only produce ‘'Babe Christabel”; we learn a full course of grammar and analysis, and produce rhymes on somebody’s soap and cure-all ointment. s><s><?> If Christians are in earnest, if lovers of true education are in earnest, they will establish and support Christian Schools. If we really care for our religion, if we really- believe in the Bible, do not let it be said that the Roman Catholics are the only people who can make sacrifices for the religious training of the young. Time was when the poorest of the poor dared any privation to avoid “going on the parish.” Are wealthy Christians going to go on the parish for the education of their children, when the old woman of 70 prefers to live on half-a-crown a week rather than go on the parish for bread? If so, then the sooner we banish the sham of a religion, that is only outward, the better. Let us have done with the hypocrisy of repeating the words: “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,” and let ns avow boldly that" we believe in secular education, 'because it is cheap, and that, like Judas, we are willing to sell our Lord and Master to the secular power for 30 pieces of silver.