PRACTICAL EDUCATION A NECESSITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1627, 21 October 1916, Page 3

PRACTICAL EDUCATION A NECESSITY.

REMARKS BY MINISTER. OF

EDUCATION,

In conversation with a Times representative on Thursday, the Hon. .1. A. Hamm (A 1 blister for Education) emphasised the great desirability of teaching Avhat will tie of actual, practical use in after lil.c. The learning of things, lie. urged, was of far greater importance than the learning of words. The late Lord Sherbrooke once gave an excellent illustration of this. Every schoolboy at Harrow, Eton, Rugby, and other great public schools, he pointed out, was taught the Latin for liver, and the Greek for liver; bill what the liver was and what service was rendered to him by 7 the liver in lbs own body he was never taught at all. Latin and Greek, staled Air Hanan, were for more than a thousand years the principal subjects taught in the schools of Europe, and Lord Sherbrooke’s statement ■ showed what a pass things had come to in the Old Country. But we have to remember to-day that a new age is now upon ns, the age of utility 7, and of science in business, and in all sorts of human industry, and education, to meet this new age and its demands, must be made more practical. If could not be gainsaid that many who had taken a elassieal education had, as a result, not been fitted, but had rather been unfitted, for taking hold of any part of the Avorld’s daily Avork. An American Avriter,' for example, stated that he bad a friend who Avas a, line scholar, a college graduate, and Aveil-read in the elassies, but the poor fellow Avas not able to find anyone avlio Avanted Latin or Greek translated into English, much Jess English translated into Latin or Greek. After he had given him a few Aveeks’ instruction in book-keeping, and so forth, hoAvever, from that time onAvard he made a good living. The trouble Avilh him was not that he Avas uneducated, but that he aviis educated in those things which did not Help him to make lbs bread and butter.

‘‘There is wisdom,” concluded Mr llanan, “in what .losh Billings says; ‘II is heller not to know so much limn lo know so ninny thing's which aren't so.’ The web and woof of past edm-nlion had been interwoven into 100 many traditions, too many superstitions, and ‘too many tilings that ain’t so.’ ”