EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2869, 6 September 1916, Page 6

EDUCATION

Sir,—Your illuminating articles on Ibis question, should inspire considerable thought among your readers. lhc problem strikes mo first as a of teachers and second the object to be attained by the system. Baldly, teachers are- horn, not made,_ and scholastic ability is 110 more a sign of the imparting gift than (as the late Josh Hillings put it) a paper collar is of a shirt. Speaking as a product of the system, anxiety comes to me at the prospect of creating a pig proof fence around another profession. Goodness knows, we suffer enough at the liands of tho learned professions already, and the prospect of making a close preserve for all teachers who havo managed to iusinuato themselves into the Education Department is appalling, irom experience I would say that tlireo out of five of our teachers have not i got the imparting gift, and instead of a help are a monace. to the rising generation. The executive of the Department should declare an open season for parents and others to combine to make a searching inquiry throughout the land to find out who aro teachers and who. are not. I am convinced this is a big .factor of the unrest as regards results. On the second head, if formation of character is the ideal aimed at, there is one big hurdle, and that is plain for all men to see, a commercial nation cannot ipso facto carry out the teachings of Christ. Enlightenment universal among the children puts the searchlight on the successful man and 60 many successful men-make a parade of religion that free education creates an unrest, arid the good, honest artisan and labourer of the previous now* uses liis education to examine ethics of comnjercialißin and Christianity. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and straightway he wishes to emulate the successful man and demand from society that which he does not earn. The life of service becomes a thing to he scoffed at, and the bookmaker, the billiardist, the card sharp, and the warehouse thief flourish, not j forgetting our old friend "Tatts." We ' live in a time of Pharisees, and the Pharisaic element is the stumbling block that arrests the development of national character. In olden days tho people in blissful ignorance delved and span to the glory of God. To-day education lias changed all that, and we are up to a stock-taking and revaluation. Education of the people is both tho cause and the effect of the deadlock thatvhas arisen bv thrusting the system into a state of society that existed before it was thought of. The hallmark of Christian fulfilment is poverty and nothing else. One man one vote carries as a corollary equality of opportunity. Tho rising generation, emerging from its free schools, finds all avenues Mocked. Wealth, trusts, combines, an 3 privilege hand him his yoke and place, and woe unto him if he does not conform. Then grows apace the silent strike,' sullen, dogged, inefficient effort, tho "oa canny," and so 011. Ambition is in abeyance for laudable ends, and the short cut of "the tote," the "sweep," and rascality take possession of too many of the brightest and the best of our free education product.—T am, etc.. F. FERGUSON. .