The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, February 13, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1360, 13 February 1915, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, February 13, 1915. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The boys and girls of our public schools are told to be patriotic, to be proud ot the fact that they are part and parcel of the Great British Empire, to honour the King and the grand old flag. But for some cranky reason best known to weak-kneed politicians, the essential, the surannm bonum for this patriotism, is almost denied them by giving history a secondary place in our schools curriculum. At last the Auckland Herald has called attention to this grave defect in our boasted educational system, and we hope the agitation it has set up to remedy this defect will result in history lessons taking their right place in the educational life of the children in this country In dealing with this question, the Herald says by one of the amazing oversights or weaknesess of our national educational system, these boys and girls of ours are being taught little or nothing of the history which teaches who they are and whence they are, and how it came about that they inherit a dowry which marshalled millions strive to-day to wrench from them and sailors and soldiers are dying to defend. It is reducing education to an empty farce, learning to a mockery, scholarship to a pretence, to teach in our schools every imaginable subject saving only the history which makes the patriot by informing youth of its kinship with the generations that have toiled and suffered and erred and triumphed in order that unfettered liberty and unqualified opportunity in the favoured lands of the earth may be its inheritance and its possession- All the great deeds of those who have gone before us, all the sacrifices they made for us, all the examples they bequeathed to us, all their matchless doings by land and sea, all their ceaseless sifting of good from bad, all our heroic past, are much as though they had never been for all the public schools impress them on the receptive and sympathetic minds of the young. _ This is inexcusable, and it is time that the Government interfered. Not only should the State insist that its Imperial history should be made familiar to those who will soon have to guard its life, but uu scholarship should be given to any boy or girl who does not exhibit a reasonable proficiency in this subject. We cannot possibly have true patriotism unless school children are taught what they owe to the Empire, any more than we can have rightful pride of race unless the rising generation understands why it should be grateful for its nationhood. This is a question which concerns the entire community, and cannot be left to the narrow determinations of any education department. The public should look to the Prime Minister himself for a satisfactory ctiange in a benighted and unpatriotic system.