BREADTH IN EDUCATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3998, 17 September 1929, Page 4

BREADTH IN EDUCATION.

“Any jboy at the age of 16 who is worth his salt wishes to get his teeth into some special subjects in which ho is interested. But do not let that fact lead you into supposing that higher education means learning more and more about less and less,” said Lord Eustace Perry, who was President of the Board of Education in the Baldwin Government, in a recent speech. “The schools and universities are turning out a lot of highly-skilled and learned people in their particular line, but they are. not always educated. General education means getting to know the .minds of men and women, getting into sympathy with them and, in the fullest sense; to understand them. Knowledge and facts are no good unless they fit in with what one might call the philosophy of life. Those ideas will not be found on the broad, metalled high roads of school and college curricula; they will have to go into the byways for them. The wogld will not fail for the lack of spe--cialists, .but it ihay fail for the lack of people with a simple human understanding and power of handling other fellows. That is the cement that keeps society together, and in this country we needed it never more than we do to-day.”