A Fallen Idol

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 92, 20 December 1912, Page 4

A Fallen Idol

By recent departmental proclamation the practice of military drill in our schools has been relegated to the region of what is known in the schools' curriculum as "optional subjects."

Tliis significant change of educational policy was ushered upon the public quite stealthily by tho public press as if nothing radical had been done. Anyone who knows much about our education system will, however, know that there is a great difference between a compulsory subject and an optional one; quite tho difference there is between our compulsory military training and the old volunteer system. It is true there still remains room for the jingo education board and inspector, the jingo school committee and schoolmaster to continue to worship at the shrine of the Fallen Idol, and herein let the workingclass take notice and at the election of teacher, committee and board, let them realise that if they don't want this thing they need not have it by the law of the land in New Zealand in 1913.

Born of the frothy jingoism of tho Boer AVar and reared up upon his pedestal just as the Chinese coolie was being convoyed to Africa to compete against the white laborer that had fought so valiantly for the "dear old flag" against the equally stubborn efforts of tho Boers, tlie Idol has stood in'our educational sanctuaries for now ten years. AVith a genius for adapting persons to circumstances, and circumstances to persons, with a good presence, and certainly a kindly tact with boys, the Idol was put up and the system of military drill propagated iv our schools by one Colonel Loveday. As a man with an idea who tried to bring about its practical realisation, the colonel did well; but as the working-class did not want the. idea—well, tho colonel did not do well.

It would be called pride by more than the Massey Government if we suggested flint the change is due to wiser counsels, to the propaganda work done this last year or two by the passive resisters, the anti-militarists and the humanitarians generally who believe that militarism docs not improve mankind : that it is not justice nor equity, though it may be law, to have placed young lads in jail by the dozen and the score becauso their ideas lead them to believe that blood-letting is not the best lesson for humanity to learn, and that when the worker sends his boy to a school which his own hard-won earnings support by taxation, the little fellow should be armed with a gun or supplied with a dummy representation of an instrument which "is always governmentally used, when all other methods fail, to coerce and to crush tho class to which his father belongs.

Tlie Idol has toppled over. It has really fallen down. It is in the gutter. Tt is with us—the working-class—to keep it in the gutter. AYe can do it. Propaganda tells. AYe have our destiny in our own hands.

The information we cull from tells us more. Physical drill is to be consistently ami methodically taught. This is a good tiling. The Department has realised at last tliat this will take exports, lii has entered their heads at hist after the longest list of experiments, fads, and fallacies, that the ordinary "schoolmarm" and tlie country "dominie" cannot teach everything and be a Jack (or JilD-of-all-trades, or else you only tinker with things educational and produce a crop of weeds. The expert's are to bo produced by

selection, getting them together, teaching them and then turning them loose among tho schools and the scholars to do the job. AA'e hasten the day when this will bo done and rejoice that at least one false god has fallen from his niche in the educational world of New Zealand.

Other Idols will have to be rudely shaken later on. In the meantime it is pleasant to know that we are "making haste slowly" and that perhaps the day will dawn upon the New Zealand Educational Department when our peace and prosperity will not be measured by the number of Dreadnoughts nor our school-boy soldiers; when a nation's worth and greatness will not ho measured by the banking accounts of our commercial magnates, hut by the proper educational principles, properly applied and properly fostered, and not all made in Germany either.