The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1918. THE MISSION OF THE SCHOOLMASTER.

Taihape Daily Times, 28 March 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 1918. THE MISSION OF THE SCHOOLMASTER.

(With which is incorporated The Taihapo. Post and Walmarlno News)..

The cause of education is the cause of liberty; there is no greater mission upon earth than that of the schoolmaster, yet, in spite of millions of money having been spent on time taken in discussing education, and millions of tons of paper having been used up in seeking educational improvement, the philosophers, philanthropists, scientists, and economists of to-day, as well as those of the past, realise that the chief corner stone of a nation’s greatness is still rejected by -British Empire builders. Education, it will be admitted, is the one great means of human improvement, yet when stock is taken of what has been achieved, of what is the return for the millions of money spent upon education in the last sixty years of free education, one stands aghast at the awful failure. The truth is Britain has not been sincere; has neither been honest nor in earnest about The education Question. There is ample evidence of this in New Zealand; the status of the schoolmaster has been below that of the tinsmith; school committees are regarded by those who instituted them as a joke; the school syllabus as well as the conduct of the processes of education and the very processes also are so twisted and warped by antagonising rules and regulations that the educational value they might primarily have had is nullified and lost. With all the educational institutions and processes; with all the money this country spends upon education, the very elements of education are the subject of the Minister of Education’s condemnation. Our attention has been particularly drawn to this question by the report of a meeting of the Taihape Branch of the New Zealand Education Institute, which appeared in yesterday’s issue of this journal. While, without a doubt, education is the great imperative necessity of the age, how many are there among our readers who have given that repor f eve'iili casual perusal ? The rock upon which any empire must stand to be permanent is that of education; had the British people not ignored this fact in the past it is safe to say the present great world conflict would not have been possible. Britain allowed other nations to bury the Empire in the race for education. By sheer ignorance and indifference begat of ignorance Britain sacrificed the proud’ position she had held for a century or more as manufacturer for the world; Britain was the world’s workshop, the world’s banking house as a corollary, what is Britain going to be in future ? Let us impress' upon all our readers the one great fact, that the British Empire’s future depends upon the mission of the schoolmaster, not upon politicians who will endeavour to continue to make a shuttlecock of education for their own political ends. If we could see this great truth realised by our Empire we should bo prepared for our nunc dimitus; we could relinquish our feeble efforts for the future, knowing that the Empire would again raise its industrial head superior to all who would destroy it. Why Labour does not see that the failure of the wealthy men they elect to make laws is a part of the scheme for the perpetuation of their subjection we cannot understand. Labour listens to the erratic nincompoops who preach plunder and revolution and refuses to give even a hearing to the schoolmaster. Labour's best interests are lying hound up with the mission of the schoolmaster, and the head of Labour will never raise to its natural attitude among people.; until it becomes fully conscious of its true position. The meeting of schoolmasters tells us that "the ability of our country to maintain its position as a nation among nations depends on the character and efficiency, civic as well as industrial, of its people.” Then comes an immensity of truth condensed into a nutshel: “Efficiency depends on education.” Of course it does, the progress of the world lus reached a stage when everything depends on education. Primeval (lays are extinct when man lived by cunning and brute force like the lower animals; he lives to-day according to the degree of ed-

ucation he has attained to, and the Empire that directs the destinies of the world must occupy the very topmost branches of the tree of knowledge. The Education Institute has in its deliberations incidentally reminded us that our educational system, despite all the years of its operations, has not yet taught us that a healthy mentality does not synchronise with a diseased physique; that there are physical defects to be righted before sound and healtETful education can be imparted and absorbed. The Institute goes further: It suggests by its statements about unsuitable schoolrooms and schoolhouses, jthe overcrowding of children in the naturally contaminated atmosphere of rooms lamentably small and unsuitable, defective vision, defective teeth, and the entire disregard for the general sanitation of school conditions, the Government is guilty of cruel disregard of the spread of human suffering as well as of the education the Empire is pining for. There is no antithesis to vice and crime in mere reading and writing—our Law Courts provide ample evidence of this. The power of education to benefit our Empire must, and does, depend upon what is included in the Empire’s ideal of education. The efforts the Education Institute are making will be appreciated by all true patriots; By those who would rather die with the Empire than live with it in subjection to another Power. The present day race for inordinate riches is overshadowing the fact that the Empire is in a rabid decline from want of education; from the want of the only pure lifeblood upon which its past glories can be resurrected and retrieved, and upon which any future glory can be sustained.