THE GERMAN IDEAL

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 194, 12 May 1921, Page 3

THE GERMAN IDEAL

NOT WANTED IN OUR SCHOOLS AN ALLEGED DANGER Tho danger of creating a. spirit of dogmatism combined with intolerance in the schools of tho Dominion was referred to by Air. R. M. Laing, M.A.j in the course of his presidential address at yesterday’s conference of the Secondary Schools Assistants’ Association of New Zealand. "Though I advocate,” he remarked, "all kinds of experiments in education, though I welcome all kinds of private schools in competition with public schools, so long as they give a good education, and do not teach tho doctrines of a sect, vet tho time is coming when we shall have to fight for the freedom of our system of public education. Mo have successfully kept denominationalism out of it; but I am afraid wo shall have to struggle against the German ideal of the school as an institution for the benefit of the State, and not for tlhe benefit or tho individual. Navy leagues, Empire leagues, and other leagues are seeking ex-cathedra pronouncements in our schools; and all of them represent some form of political partisanship, or economic, interest, however carefully it mav ho disguised. , "If these subjects must be introduced into tho schools let the navalist and the Imperialist state his case; but let the anti-navalist and anti-imperialist have an equal opportunity of doing the same. It. is ns foolish to go to a certain section of the community—even though n should hajmen to be a large section-tor dogmatic views on policy questions as to o-o to the politician or the daily newspaper for the whole truth about the vast outer world of Foreign Affairs or tho deep underworld of Labour. . . Debatingl societies do something to help the boy, but I would go further. I should (when such questions are to be discussed) invite the most prominent men in tho town representing the most strongly antagonistic points of view, to give addresses to the upper forms of the scaool; let the brewer, the publican, prohibitioriis - ! be allowed to set forth their individual views, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker, the individualist and tho Socialist.”