The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, JANUARY 27th, 1925. EDUCATION AND FADS.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 January 1925, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, JANUARY 27th, 1925. EDUCATION AND FADS.

According to an English paper Miss C. Cowdrov, principal of Crouch End High School and College, has been saying some extremely sensible things' about education. “The great want in education to-day,’’ she remarked, “is common sense. Nothing else has been so exploited by faddists and visionaries.” It is to be feared this is precisely the truth. If teachers as a class would realise that it is their business to teach rather than to preach, and that

the reason why they arc there is to turn out young people able to take their place in the world and not merely discontented with the world, wo should not find all the inefficiency coupled with superciliousness that is current nowadays. Education has been made too much the cockpit of rival political squabbles: and as many cranks al‘e always loudly giving forth their lantastic theories affinit it, one cannot feci much surprise that many teachers also think they are entitled to air their views hv influencing their pupils. Yes, indeed, comments a Home writer, education has been ‘‘exploited by faddists and visionaries.” The unfortunate sufferers are children at their most impressionable age, and we sec the result every day in the widespread incompetence and discontent of those who are supposed to have been fitted out for life in our schools. If is a most danegrous and unseemly tiling to make children a subject for the experiments of faddists. In Bolshevik Russia many children have been turned into monsters by the vile lessons instilled into them. Everybody knows that flic minds of the young are capable of Ih>iug moulded, and a very grave responsibility rests upon those who attempt to make them the target of their poli-tic-ill manoeuvres or personal imlio-syn-erasies. Education ought to he beyond all that sort, of thing. It ought no more to be the subject of petty controversy than, let us say, life-saving in a time of peril. When ;t fire brigade arrives at a burning house, the inhabitants are not first preached at before being saved. And a teacher is really in the position of saving life. With him ties to a very large extent the future success or failure of liis pupils. His business is to equip his charges with a sound basis of knowledge, and thus make them into useful members of society. If ho merely warps their minds he is destroying their usefulness and, cunscquently, their bappiiness. Children will soon grow up, and then, they can form their own opinions, hut it is a deceitful and cruel act to fill their undeveloped brains with theories about existence and society which may cause them to he soured before their time and may have an irreparable influence upon their whole careers. What we need in education is more intelligence and loss crankiness. By all means let us develop a sense of individuality, but do let us give children a fair chance. We are turning out children who have, too often, a lively sense of their grievances without any corresponding sense of their duties. A system which allows that sort of thing has something deeply wrong about it. It is indeed, not too much to say that radical change is called for.