GENERAL PRINCIPLES FIRST
Sir,—Just recently in one of your leading articles relating" to our education system you advocated tbe formulation of general .principles first and the question of details to be left to experts. - This is a vital principle which, if the people of this" country follow, will lead them out of the Slough of Despond. Usually when a person is in trouble he calls in an expert or specialist to determine the first principles of what is wrong and the nature of the cure to be applied, the question of details being carried out, not ..by the expert, but by the individual himself. To say that an individual who needs an expert's advice should determine the general principles, whilst the expert should carry out the details, is to make the individual more expert than the expert himself, whichis putting the cart before the horse; a point that Mr. F.'L Combs stressed in his educational address. If we believe in- experts' advice, by all means let us have- them. At the head 'of our- legislature, tlie machine that makes the laws, we do not have an expert, a man trained as a lawyer, but-on principle the head of the legislature should be a fully-trained lawyer- so that he can assess all the relative value of the laws that pass through the legislature in which ease we will have the natural order of things—the horse before the cart. We have a topsy-turvy idea ot things and need to reverse our ideas. —I am, etc.,
T. F. SIMPSON.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 120, 22 May 1937, Page 8
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256GENERAL PRINCIPLES FIRST Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 120, 22 May 1937, Page 8
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