RUGBY, RADIO & RACING

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 154, 17 July 1937, Page 6

RUGBY, RADIO & RACING

New Zealand's Three R.'s FUNDAMENTALS OF EDUCATION Someone has said recently that New Zealanders, like Austra-lians, believed in the three "R's." But they were not reading, writing and arithmetic, but Rugby, Tadio and racing. Mr Arthur Lismer, director of the Toronto Art Gallery, included this comment in scme remarks he made at Dunedin on education in the Dominion, but went on to qualify it by saying that education® lsts every where did not believe the original three "R's" to be the fundamental part of education. "They have been treated as that for the last 150 or 200 years, and look at the mess the wo?ld's in now," he added. "People do not want to hurt one another. " They are the same everywhere, and wherever one goes one finds people wondering what wars are about. ' ' Because of this attitude might it not be claimed |^at something had been neglected in the world- 's education 1 he asked. It should be roalised that civilisatipn in itself was an art form. That was why the international fellowship *in education had been'formed, to inerease the value of education in its xeal work — encouraging human sympathies. Visitors to this end of the world, Mr Lismer said, often marvelled at the close bond existing between the colonies and Great Britain. Canada was bound to England by many ties of patriotism, loyalty, and politics, but in matters of education, believing education to ,be an art form, Canadians" reserved the right to live in their own world in theii; own way. Should the rural education system in England be accepted fully formed as be*ng of value today? It had to be considered when methods in use in olfler cf untries were copied whether they haa not already been ehanged, and whether copying them might mean adopting pare o£ an obsolete system. ' ' Some very dreadful .things in education are happening here," he continued, "You hear of 'them from time to time, witli surprise. I do not propose now to speak of the system of grading teachers, or of their payment, but I will say that education is a public dutv. "I have heard of the work you are domg here for crippled choldren. It sofcms that we are all a little -rippled in- education a:.d art," he adcrAd.