A READER’S MEDLEY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 99, 21 January 1935, Page 7

A READER’S MEDLEY

Corrupting the Sumbook •‘lt is the last act of despair to tamper with the finances of education.” So runs the address of an eminent educationist. And he is right. To tamper with the finances of education can only end in setting a bad example to those being educated. Every butterfat sum, every piece of work carried out by A, B and C, is founded on the implication that there is no tampering. That there has been, and will be, no tampering. The sumbook merchant who buys one lot of tea at 1/8 and another at 1/5 and wants his 3d profit on the blend, must be above tampering in any form. He must solve the problem with arithmetical honesty, and so must a child. He is not supposed to realise that he can make 1/- profit if he reduces his message Boy’s wage by 9d, and neither is the child. It should never occur to him that an even bigger profit might accrue if he gets the tea on false pretences, and, gives shortweight, nor should it to the child. Yet if they tamper with the finances of education, if Willie’s teacher gets £2 this year for teaching the sums he previously taught for £2/10/-, who can blame Willie for very naturally presuming that the importance of the sums in question has waned very considerably? Who can blame Willie if he feels entitled to make his merchant hold out for a moratorium, or apply for a rebate on- duty, ,or even descend to a little speculative cooking of the books? Who can blame him, knowing as he does that the finances of educat’.on are being adroitly juggled and jumbled and even tampered with interests of that ultimate of long division and subtraction, the national budget? Who, indeed?—D.G.