A CITY OF EDUCATION

Hokitika Guardian, 28 September 1931, Page 2

A CITY OF EDUCATION

MANY ADVANTAGES. STUDY OF EVERY-DAY WORK AND LIFE. LONDON, August 7. The advantages or being educated at a city uuy school were empnasiS'.u on ijia y at tue Manchester urammci auic-1 oy Oil- A. Damei Hail, of tue Ministry <j[ Agriculture and 1' islieries, ;i uisunguisucu Uid.Mancunian and tne presKleiiu o. me i-outiun section or tne eiicl Mancunians' Association. ‘•iNowauays school-ieaclnng is neither so dull nor so cne-siued as it used te be,” said toil- JJapiel. “And again in tiie modern complex world energy undirected by knowledge is becoming less eitective, so you boys must put away the easy thought that school does not matter. lou have to share in the making of Manchester, and therelore o. England and the British Empire. “it is all too common talk that Lancashire is down and out and that England has reached the declining part ei the curve. But 1 am a student of genetics —the science of breeding—and tile one central fact in that subject is the importance and persistence ot race. Th e qualities of the men who made Lancashire and made England are still here, so take courage and we—that is you—will win out of this oonuision as out of the many bad situations in the part. DANGER IN PUBLIC SCHOOL PRIDE. 1 “I wonder if you realise what advantages you possess in being educated at a. great city day school, i know that this is not the conventional point of view, and that England points with pride to what we commonly call ‘public schools’—Eton, Harrow, Win- J Chester and the rest. It would be idle to deny their dignity, the imposing roll of great- men who belong to them, or the service they have rendered in maintaining the ideal of a ‘gentleman.’ “But in their well-deserved pride and self-sufficiency lies a danger. They are* societies apart, which impress upon j their members a scale of values of their own in which the prime purpose of the i school—learning—finds little part. They create a feeling that it is enough to have been a member of the club, only | achievements within its ambit are of much account. ft is these artificial sometimes childish, standards carried on in the university and later world that produce the innate distrust of intellectualism which the Macmillan Com mittee deplores.” There were obvious drawbacks in going to school in Manchester —the initial handicap of not belonging to the j “public school” club. “But never I mind,” said Sir Daniel, “your advantage—and it is a lasting one—is that you are spending your formative years | among men and women who are at . work in the every-day world. By daily contact you get to know how people I live. Your acquaintance with that large majority of British folk, the weekly wage earners, is not confined to domestic servants and cricket professionals. It is no small thing that you have access to museums, galleries, libraries and the like, and that you are in the way of meeting people who are making things, GIVE SHAKESPEARE A CHANCE. “Above all, you are in a school where everyone realises that he has got to iwork. To acquire the habit of work is • everything in your after-life. And by the habit of work I don’t mean poring iso many hours over your lessons; 1 mean the habit of concentrating on what you have to do, so that you may have time to give to something more interesting. If there is one piece of ad!vice which I may give you, it is simply this: ‘Be curious.’ Get to know things —don’t while you are young regard any human activity as outside your interest. Never admit ‘this is not for the likes of me,’ unless you have proved it and found it wanting. You will be instructed and called upon to admire and reject; give full weight to the advice, and don’t deny other people’s experience until you can replace it by your own. It is only honest to say you prefer Edgar Wallace to Shakespeare provided you have given Shakespeare achance. “Don’t he too anxious about mapping out the stages of your career anct making sure of a pension at the end; he prepared to take chances. Life may deal you out many cruel blows. They need not be knock-outs as long as you retain your self-respect.”