EDUCATION AND PROPAGANDA.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 128, 15 April 1926, Page 4

EDUCATION AND PROPAGANDA.

IT was reported from Perth, West -Australia, last week, that the Minister of Education had refused to allow returned soldiers to enter the schools and address school children on Anzac j Day. The Minister explained that a certain society proposed to have addresses delivered by maimed and disfigured soldiers, whose appearance, even more than their words, would convince the children of the horror and evil of war. It was not made quite Ciear whether tile Minister was at the —me refusing- this society permission to carry out its design, or whether, on I the ground of impartiality, he was justifying another refusal. It seems, writes the Christchurch Press, hardly necessary to say, first of all, that the proposal to make children pacifists by the emotional force of so sad an object lesson is a repulsive one. The weight of emphasis lies on “ emotional ; for it is not in itself a complete or sound argument against war that men are crippled and disfigured by it. Heroism surrenders its body in noble causes, to many a terrible risk not of the battlefield. The truth about war cannot be deduced, by grown man or small child, from the pitiful spectacle of a maimed soldier, whose injuries cry only that war is torture and terror, and make it seem a duty to forget that, however rarely, war may still 6 tne * ast resort of justice and humanity. But it is as important that sc-nool children should be protected -Liom the partial views of narrow patriotism, as from the partial views of narrow pacificism. The sheerest conviction will not save, a mere propagandist from doin°harm in the school room : in t deed, the greater the sincerity, and the more violent the appeal to’emotion, the greater the danger of making converts to a half-truth or arousing In some types of mind a lastingdistrust of the whole truth. The matter of war and peace is, of course, only a particular case. The schoolroom platform dees not exist to give individuals or societies the chance to spread among children views on subject? which they are not of an age to understand or which are incompletely presented to them. Few enough adults have the power to weigh evidence and: form a sound judgment; and they will hardly become more numerous if the schools are permitted to be nurseries of prejudice.