EDUCATION-OLD & NEW

Hokitika Guardian, 20 September 1924, Page 4

EDUCATION-OLD & NEW

(Beryl Sage in Daily .Mail). I number' aiming my acquaintances a great-aunt and her niece. Siunelimes they ciiteiluln me with accounts of their education. The methods are strikingly dissimilar; likewise the results. At the age of live Aunt Sophia be-i-aine a pupil at a dame’s school, which was the* si.one of her entire sehidastle career. Already she “knew her letters" and imild spell ill easy .syllables. In consequent c of this achievement she was nromnted directly to reading, and went trippingly through such seuI ■■in as “No man may pill olf l Inlaw of thill." ".My joy is in Ills law all Hie day.” At seven Aunt Sophia learned to write, at eight she eoiilil do simple sum-, at ten she was inducted into the mysteries of grammar and geography. At fourteen Aunt Sophia bad parsed her way through Young’s "Night Thoughts." Thomson’s "Seasons,’’ and "f*aradiso Lost’’; through imarly every honk, in lart. that she mild lav her hands mi. She had made I linen •hill, ho lm.l w m bed a ve plomh'iil sampCr. sho omild knit and bake, she could daitoe and write lei tin s without mis-spelling a word

or transgressing a rule of grammar. I lor nieoe’s education is marvellon.ilv i om.preheiisi ve. She at tends an expensive school aiitnly provided with eliarts and maps and seienlilie and physical cull lire apparatus. Yet sin* was three years in learning to read intelligibly. Still, she continues to probe abstruse subjects, sh" speaks in strange

I ungues, practises gymnastics and plays games. Certainly her advantages have been very much greater than those of her great-aunt. But, somehow, the result is not exactly .satisfactory. Aunt Sophia left school with a mind hungering anil thirsting lor knowledge, and this hunger and thirst have endured through life. She has mastered three foreign languages, and at eighty her interest in all questions of the day is keen. She retains, too, a linn grasp oil matlicm ities and was able the other day to discomfit a mail who, taking advantage of her age, endeavoured to beguile her into an unwise investment. The niece cares for lew books, and those few are not of the most desirable character. In short, she lias no literary curiosity and no time to gratify it if she had. As to calculating tile interest mi one might as well ask her to settle tile problem of .Mars. What is the matter? Has the niece not bad enough done lor her education, or lias slm had ton much doner Has she been so constantly trained and cultivated that she lias had no time to grow? lias she been kept so l,nsv doing something that she lies had no time to be anything?