PICTURES AND EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 239, 3 July 1919, Page 6

PICTURES AND EDUCATION

Sir, —Til his address at I lie opening session of tho Council of Education, the Hon. J. A. Hanan foreshadowed reforms which would make for a wider and more efficient system of education corresponding with the largo necessities of social and industrial advance, and the growing desire to promote « higher civilisation. A more definite statement regarding the. path of progress would have been very welcome; but it is satisfactory to know Hint the Minister. is dissatisfied with things ns thsy are, for dissatisfaction is the foe of stagnation.

But Dr. Anderson, the Director of Education, does not appear to he at all 1 rem bled by tho goad of that divine discontent which lias doso so much to imiirove the condition of Mankind. When Professor MacMilbin Brown referred to (he need of a revision (f tho syllabus, Dr. Anderson replied thai there was nothing particularly wrong with the syllabus ns it stood, and no great change was contemplated. Such complacency is astonishimr. The world's greatest educationists franklv admit that there is rometliing radically wrong with existing education systems, and are driving with untiring zeal to improve them, both as regards subjects taught and methods of teaching; hut Dr. Anderson thinks that there is nothing lo worry about. "All's well," ho says,lll effect. "Let others strive and cry, but let us continue in peaceful stagnation." If this is the attitude of our Education Department, that educational reconstruction foreshadowed by the Minister is not likely to be forwarded with much enthusiasm.

But is nil well with our education system? The Council of Education's discussion on picture plays reveals a state of afl'airs that must cause uneasiness to thoughtful people. One speaker pointed out that the public demand '.lie morally objectionable type of" film. Such pictures are no doubt weakening the moral fibre cf young people, 'but they are in. accordance with the public taste. If the public wants scientific, scenic, and educational films they can have them; but the objectionable sort is preferred. This preference shows that there is something wrong with our education system. The great majority of the patrons of out i:icture theatres have- passed through our State schools, and one might reasonably have expected that fifty years of free, secular and compulsory education would have sufficiently improved Die public taste to make it impossible for such a. large section of our people to delight in debasing pictures. An education system ought to raise the moral, intellectual, and artistic ideals and standards of the people, and if it does not, there is something radically wrong villi it. Characterbuilding should be the first aim of education. A leading English uuthority tells us that the aim of education is primarily spiritual—spiritual in the broadest sense —and the three primary aims of the spiritual lifo are goodness, truth, and beauty. If our education system fails to beget a love of these things it must li!> pronounced a failure. A nation that had a real admiration for the good, the true, and the beautiful, could not tolerate nilgar and demoralising amusements. The popularity of objectionable picture plays should provide our education reformers with food for very serious thought—l am, etc., N. E. BURTON.