LEARNING MADE TOO EAST.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17121, 16 April 1921, Page 11

LEARNING MADE TOO EAST.

Sir George B. Douglaa, Bart., wJi# presided at tho annual dinner of th® ICdinburgh Border Counties Association, suid (reports tho "Scotsman") thai tbey had now a new .Education Act in force,' and they hoped for great results from " that Act. Thero wan, however, one form of education, morally fully as much as intcllectuilly, for which it Hounded tho doath-knell and thai waa tlio pursuit of knowledge under difficul* ties, a pursuit which had been Tcry familiar to tho Borderem in bygone times. It might he timo that these difAcuities should go, but he could not help thinking that they had made too drastic and too Hweeoinjj a chiftige in doing away with these difficulties all at once and to the extent that had been done. Whether that was for good or ill, or a. mixture of tho two, certain it triw that they should, have no more Jatne* Hoggs teaching themselves to write nt the age of twenty while keeping their sheep on the hillsides; they Bhoufd havp jio more John Leydeiis—tlx? cottar'# w>n —raising themselves by their own insistent efforts to n high position in the. intellectual world: and they should have no more fifteen-year-old Thomas Carlyles trudging from Dumfriesshire into ICdinburgh to attend their classes at th» university. The Thomas Carlvle of today, i)" there was one. would, go in ft rate paid motor-car to tho station, have his fore paid and his ffe.l paid, aud, lor all lie knew, his maintenance paid as well, and whatever gain there might Ix 3 in book-learning from such benefactions, there would bo a corresponding loss in dignity and independence and hi . the formation of character. ■ - * Tho form backer can't do without the Pocket Turf Register. Xov published.