TRUE EDUCATION EFFIGIENCY,

Hokitika Guardian, 28 June 1918, Page 4

TRUE EDUCATION EFFIGIENCY,

(By Miss Agusta White.)

It is recognised to-day from the Prime Minister down to the hoys and girls just leaving school to face a world that demands efficiency for its salvation. That education is imperative, is indispensihle. What can I do ? is the pertinent question asked by individuals.

What one can do depends upon oneself, on one’s capacities, one’s circumstances. One can be something in the shop, in the kitchen, in the drawing-room. You can blossom into the flower which is your character. Character alone is the first fruits of true civilisation, and the supreme education of others. Your thoughts are all the time radiating from you, even in the utmost physical isolation, these subtle mental messengers unite with and colour tho thoughts of others. No one who has learned the arts of noble thinking aud noble living need fear to be left idle to-day, assuredly such a one will he actively and usefully employed. One in describing a lady of his acquaintance says, to know her is a continual education. There is no tear that if a man achieves a noble character, he shall not he educating all with whom he comes in contact. Example is all-powerful, not a self-conscious example of course. The man who goes about consciously setting a good example to his follows is an object provocative of amusement rather than respect—like a Kaffir who feels himself an irresistible bean because lie lias his Sunday red blanket on. It is when we are thinking, not of our personal selves, but of the attributes of God, purity and peace, and are aspiring to express some part of those attributes in ourselves, that we may be setting an example <0 others. People in the mass are intensely imitative, and the saddest thing perhaps that is encountered in educating children is.to hear them repeating the foul language, and imitating the coarse rude manners that surround them, through the habits of older people. Small boys and girls particularly the hero-worshipping type, are continually imitating father, mother and teacher.

So we place character first, high above all oilier qualifications, in the one who aspires to help and to teach others, as being indispeusible Boo!: learning cannot be belittled by the man who recognises that the true wealth of the world is contained in books. Education must become liberal and universal. We do not want our village Hampdens to stop short of the ‘ national reforms ’ they were born to achieve for want of a good free education. We want our Miltons to sing to the true pitch of their own great nature, aided in their development by all the state can do to assist genius.