PICTURES AND EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 264, 4 August 1919, Page 8

PICTURES AND EDUCATION

Sir—Mr. Sievwright asks me? Where are the debasing pictures? He had better ask the Council of Education. My remarks were based on definite statements made at a recent meeting' of the council tc the effect that the public can have scientific, scenic, and educational films if they so desire, but they prefer the •objectionable sort. I presume the members of the council knew what they were talking about. Commenting on the council's discussion, I asserted that' "one might reasonably have expected that fifty years of free, secular, and compulsory education would have ' sufficiently improved the public taste.to make it impossible for such a large section of our people to delight in debasing pictures." Mr. Sievwright has not refuted this asertion. He has merely attempted to refute a caricature of it.' Mr. Sievwright objects to my contention that if our education system fails to beget a\ love of goodness, truth, and beauty it must be pronounced a failure. Does he contend that failure to beget a love of goodness, truth, and beauty proves that an education system is a success? I repudiate most emphatically the caricature of my argument contained in the third aud fourth paragraphs of Mr. Sievwright's last letter. Those two paragraphs can only be described as a garbled rigmarole of senseless misrepresentation written in Mr. Sievwright's own peculiar style. He drags my words from their context, and juggles with them in all sorts of ways in a desperate attempt to manoeuvre me into an untenable position. I must treat such controversial methods with the ccntempt they deserve. Mr. Siovwright row states that "the trouble is we require more and higher education." Of course we do. My first letter was written with the object of drawing attention to this need.—l am, etc.. N. E. BURTON. Auckland, August 1..