THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1904. OUR JOSS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 5, 4 February 1904, Page 17

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1904. OUR JOSS

fOLITICIANS and secular journalists in these countries have for over a quarter of a century been dancing and singing around the golden calf of godless public instruction It was blasphemy and high treason to suggest that it had spot or blemish. ' Our primary education system,' says the Melbourne ' Argus ' in a recent issue, ' has become a joss or fetish, which is far above the hostile criticism of its faithful and superstitious worsihip-

pers. The only note of complaint,' it adds, ' seems to be that it is not expensive and extensive enough. Before some of our legislators will be satisfied with it, it must include the creche at one end and the university at the other.' Half-educated Ministers of Education throughout the seven colonies have used it as a; corpus vile for crude experiments and have tip-tilted the) public purse into it in' every form of useless and fantastic expenditure. Witness, for instance, the Victorian Ministers of Education who had the girls m the State schools thumping German pianos in one room, while in another the boys werei sitting crosslegged, like so many Buddhas, learning to thread the needle and sew. ' 'Gold is omnipotent,' says the) Spanish proverb, ' and the ducat is his lord lieutenant I .' But gilding couild not forever conceal the innate defects of a system that journalist and political faddist' made it a sacrilege to criticise. Sooner or later the public had to discover that the god of their worship had feetj of clay. Here in New Zealand our sacrosanct and be-hind-date system is undergoing radical revision— long, after it had become an intolerable burden to teacher and pupil alike. And the expert Commission appointed in New South Wales to inquire into public education in Europe has reported that the system in use in the Mother State of the Commonwealth, X which is practically identical with ours) is at leasti ten years behind that of England. And foremost expert opinion has more than once declared that the English system lays a decade or more behind that of Continental Europe. In a noted discourse on the subject at Bulli on last Sunday week, Cardinal Moran said :— lln England, unfortunately, the public system of education had been on its trial for some time and stood before the world as universally convicted of being unequal to the times in which they lived. He was ie-cvding the other day a uidgment or one of the great? experts in England on the public system of education there, and his report was that over the portals of every public school in England the words " failure " and " stupidity " should be written, for these were the distinctive features 01 the school system in that country. Especially in one branch, which might be called the bianch ot science, it was now confessed by all that schools m England were far and away, at least, ten times inferior to the Continental schools-. One of the leading peiiodicals connected with educational matters] reported that the South Kensington Department o£ Science, which gave a tone and administered, so to say, the whole department of science in England— that this department was the most costly, the most wasteful, and the most stupid of all the educational shams in England It. was a very telling veidict, one which he (the Cardinal) would be \ery sorry to pronounce, but coming from a leading authority interested in the develops ment of education, it told.ils own tale Ii such was the condition in England compared with the educational requirements of the Continent and the wonderful development, these schools on the Continent had attained, it came home to themsehes, that it their public school system heie was to be worth the money expended on it, some life must be put into it — if Ihcir system was at present ten years behind the public- school system of England, while that of England was ten yeais behind the Continent.' * The English type of teacher and English teaching methods had found their way into Germany before 1866. But the rigid educationalist tests lequired in Prussia for military service speedily pole-axed both ' The German pedagiOgue,' says Sidney Whitman m his noted work, ' is as poor as a church mouse, but de\oted to his work heart and soul. It is impossible to find his equal' elsewhere in the world ' Educational congresses, expert study year iri year oui, under State direction and at State cost, have gncn to Germany those advanced systems of public instruction to which, in great part, sheowes her present proud position in the world of intellect and commerce. And all this scholastic success she has achieved without such incentives as scholarships, or appeals to the spirit of rivalry or competition. Throughout Australasia, in the meantime, we have been content to jog along with antiquated methods, copying the dear

old Motherland, and— like her, and unlike Canada—burdening our children's brains and clogging our commerce with a system of weights and measures and rules that are as cumbersome and out-of-date as the ideographs of the heathen Chinee. Here in New Zealand we have long been straining to produce infant phenomena—overburdening the brains of our youth with doses of undigested knowledge that is utterly lost or thrown to the winds in, the practical battle of after life. Yet the new school syllabus proposed to add still further to tihe burdens of teacher and pupil. In the crush and hurry of stuffing the children's heads with homoeopathic doses of fifty 'ologies, the great object of education— the formation of character— is wholly neglected in our public schools. Within the narrow limits of their system, our State school' teachers are, no doubt, good instructors. But tihey are not educators. And this arises, not from their fault, bait from the radical defect of a system which, in practice, assumes that the child has no more soul within him than the colt of a wild ass.v * Catholics alone in these colonies realise the tremendous perils and possibilities of youth, and the dreadi responsibilities of the work of education We give the development of character its due place in our .system State inspection in New Zealand and public competitions in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia, and other States of the Commonwealth, show at the same time that, in the matter of secular instration, we are ever ready to pit ourselves against all comers- At recent public examinations, for instance, for twenty positions in the Commonwealth service, fourteen successful candidates — among them the highest on the list — came from the Catholic schools It took a generation of agitation and a long and costly war to reform the British army. Expert opinion and public dissatisfaction may at last send that darling idol — ' Ours Great National System ' — to the melting pot But no reform can be complete but one that will recognise in a practical way the valuable work which the Catholic schools are doing for the State.