EDUCATION.

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 48, 19 October 1931, Page 2

EDUCATION.

According to cables, Yale University has decided to bury tin and Greek, giving preference to French, German, Italian and Spanish. This is another proof that America leads the world in education, unpleasant though it may be to admit it. The subJ ject is dealt with very effectively as follows, by a writer in the Sydney 'Bulletin" and what is said regarding Australia applies with equal force to New Zealand. "In our country when a boy oi girl reaches 21, he or she is allowed to express an equal opini°n at the ballot-box with a professo.r of economics. Yet in the sehoolroom, economics, so important in our life, is put aside in the interests of compulsory Latin and algebra. No one denies the charm of Latin, but to make every high school or great public school pupil learn it is about as sensible as making every stoker buy a sextant. In a girl's life, nothing is more important than niotherhood and the care of children. Most girls become mothers a few years after they leave school. Yet physiology and principles of domestic science are about the only things girls are not taught, except on urgent demand. Instead, they are filled up, under the guise of * culture," with a smattering of all varieties of languages, dead and alive, that they cannot possibly use, and rriade to study algebra and higher mathematics in order that they may be able to add up the butcher's bill in the days to come. Education is in the hands of university professors. ' Most of them have gone direct from school to a university, and, after taking an odd

course or so at a foreign address, have returned to the seats of learning of their own country. They know only their own job of teaching their own pet subject. Of course, there are exceptiohs, especially on the medical side, whose professors mix with all classes and creeds daily. Mainly, however, they live apart from the world in an atmosphere of mediaeval moulting. These faults are mentioned, not in malice, but to emphasise that there is no hope of getting education reform at the fountain head. It will be accomplished only by urgent pressure from without. In his excellent book 'The Golden Key,' Dr. Neil McQueen pdinted out how the one per cent. of potential university students in every sepondary school dictate the policy of teaching the other ninety-nine, a s'tate of affairs as deplorable as it is absurd; tJniv^rsitidg are ^ hide-bound by traditions and those Which f 6ll°w. "the British in everything but " the ' production of national leaders, teach things not so much because they think they ought to, but because those things are taught in England. The teaching here of hook French, for instance, is still mbre' silly than the teaching of Latin. English people learh French because it is possible to go to Paris to lunch and be baek in London for tea. In other words, it is a business! propoSition for many of Englaiid's commercial men to be able to speak French. Here the only French 9999 people out 'of every 10,000 will need is that 'Avez-vous-du-pang' variety aired on the ohe great event of their hves, their trip to Europe." • .