EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 46, 19 November 1918, Page 3

EDUCATION

TIIE CHEAPEST THING GOING TO-DAY

Dr. A. E. Shipley, tho Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, in an address to tho National Union of Teachers, said somo scathing things about our attitudo to education.

"Arthur B'jnson lias recently reminded us, next to our birth and to our death, education is by far the most important foature of our life. To these three important event?, I should myself—but I speak as an amateur—have added marriage, but in this matter my friend Mr. Benson is as inexperienced as I am. But whether he is. right or I am rieht, we tr-nclicrs are placed on the same level as the- Divine, the Physician and, dare I add, ,the Undertaker? There is. bowever, fhio, difference. Whereas the administrations of the former are intermittent and comparatively temporary, a schoolmaster's care is continuous and lasts forbears. Divine, Physician, Undertaker. "Education is the one hopo of the future. Without education is it conceivable that the dreams 01 tnose who, use the Dean of St. Paul's, preach the Gospel of Genetics, can ever be realised? Education is of more importance than politics, for it ought to educate the politician, though 1 fear it does not always do so.

"Education, then, as a profession, ought somehow to make a career for our best men. Does it? "'Tho-cheapest thing going to-day,' says the Satirist, 'is education. 'I pay "my cook,'' said Crates ■ ironically, 'four pounds a year; but a philosopher can be hired for about sixpence and a. tutor for three-halfpence.'

" 'So to-day,' -writes Erasmus, 'a man stands aghast at" the thought of paying for his boy's education a sum which would buy a foal or hire a farm servant.' 'Frugality—it i 9 another name for madness! 1 After 400 years the madness has not abated. One of the Strongest Forces, "The position 'has not much changed since Plato wrote 21)00 years ago. if wo were being ruled by statesmen instead of being enslaved ay politicians, we might hopo that a little of our money which is being so lavishly disposed of by other liands might be spent on improving the position of those in whoso hands lie the future of our race. '

"The 'man in the strcet,\or as they say in America, the man 'on the cars/ does not.realise that by submitting himself or his son to education he is putting himself under one of the /Strongest forces in the world. He is apt to think that he is submitting himself or his son to something which i 3 irksome, something which 'is a hit of a hore,' but hardly to he avoided, like having one's hair cut, trying on clothes or being photographed.' 'He therefore seeks to cheapen education, and, in so far as he succeeds, the educators deteriorate in number and in power. Buckets and Empty Wells. "In North America, educated I opinion holds, that the wisest and most beneficent application of the vast sums Mr. Carnegie has given away is the pension fund ho-has established • for teachers in universities, colleges, and technical schools. For this purpose he has set aside ■fS.ODO.MO, Bringing in an income of .£150,000 a year; and ho extended the benefits of this fund not only to teachers in the UniM but to those of Canada and Newfoundland.

"Would that some such fund could be established in our country! Something to look forward to, some clinnco of rest before the e fmal rest, < would put honrt into many an c-er-worked and over : worried teapher. For after vears of teaching we weary, as Cowper has -it:— "Of dropping buckets into empty wells And growing old in drawing nothing up."