True Education.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume VIII, Issue 13, 1 July 1918, Page 98

True Education.

In the course of an able sermon on education the Rev. A. Moncur Mblock said recently: — "The new education now says: .There are 1,500,000 boys amd girls thrown upon the world with a smattering of knowledge. Let us keep them at school another three years and instruct them m engineering, building, woodwork; printing, and silversmith work, etc. Let us make them salesmen and commercial travellers, and prepare them for the counting house and commercial life. Let us drill them m mathematics, English, geography, history, and science, with practical laboratory and manual work. Yes, and what then? What have you produced? A character? Personality? A man? No, you have produced a nation, which is nothing more than a workshop filled with labourers.

In all this the Soul is not mentioned. That mus which cries out for a living personality, the ideal man, has been stifled and crushed. It is all this life, and the life to come has been forgotten. The message of Jesus Christ, 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added, ' has been lost sight of. They say, 'The necessity is for a more widespread distribution of scientific knowledge.'

' ' Religion cannot be put out of the world. For man is a religious creature. He cannot live without being m touch with the supernatural world. Christ alone can satisfy the human soul's cry for the fellowship of personality. Ido not ask that the Bible be brought back into the schools, but I do say, and maintain^ that there is no such thing as true education, apart from the teachings of Christ, and the stamp of His manhood upon it. I maintain that Christian parents are doing their children an incalculable amount of harm if they send their children to a school without this element m it. Thank God the Church of England is making a move m this direction, and when the new King's College is built, the primary schools opened m the various centres, as at Hamilton, I am convinced we shall have schools and" colleges where right methods will be used to educate the children. If education only lasts till we reach the grave, and helps us to scrape through this life with a little ease, then the time spent on it is wasted and lost. We need a new vision ; we want to see beyond the horizon of this life of material things, and bring m the Kingdom of God now. v The, place to start, is the pchooL" ■