CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 318, 3 June 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

REAL EDUCATION. Educationists the world over are nowadays engaged in showing the futilities and absurdities of accepted systems of education. Apparently tho longer a great teacher has been engaged in systematic brain cramming of the young, the more rebellious lie becomes against its imperfections. Ruskin once said that "the entire object of education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge. What we like determines what we are, and to teach tuste is inevitably to form character." The object of great educationists is to "humanise" schools and to eliminate the idea that schools are soulless machines which mechanically pour the same facts into diverse brains. S. W. Johns, another rebellious educationist, lately said: 'We want neither animated adding machines, nor supercilious smattcrers, but men and women with eyes that see and ears that hear. The school is the place where, If anywhere, the worker in the plastic material of brain and character ought to be free from hindering interference—' yet the public elementary school is a place where work is regulated as a powdei factor}'." Mr. Birrcll uttered a profound truth when he said: "The teacher should be absolute master of his own quarter-deck." One of the greatest of British educationists is Sir James foxall. A word of advice from him: "Let'us induce in children a love for the use df their mental tools, and encourage , in the children a passion for self-educa-tion. To cam a livelihood is not the important thing in life. That is a comparatively simple thing. Tho difficult thing is to know how to live. The main thing an elementary school ought to work for is to teach children how to live—to live in the spirit, to live in the soul, and to live in the intellect." The system that must become obsolete is the Bystent of massing brains that are in every case dissimilar and hasting the whole lot with exactly the same formula. Individuality is necessarily shown in scholars but not always encouraged, and so the vast majority of the people of the world begin their education when they are free from the fetI ters of school.

THE PUBLIC HEALTH. We are coming on. We have public hospitals and a Health Department of the Government. This Department, by its officers is doing more and more in the way of hunting out possible causes of disease and the means of spreading disease, such as rats, defective drainage, etc. They might, however, go a great ileal furtlier, and will ere Jong, perhaps. It was a long time ago that the dentists started examining the teeth of school children, and in some lands they exiimine them medically as well. Why does not New Zealand do all this, and more? If it is well to enquire into the state of the health of children, is it not well to enquire into the health of their elders, too; and if they are not able and willing to use curative treatment, put them where they will get it—in the public hospital? This, too, is undertaken in some lands, notably in dealing with consumption, and in providing for those dependent on them. Then, too, the Maoris are to be provided with nurses at public expense; while withall ive have the Plunkct nurses (these ought to be Governtaent officers) and nurses for backblock district. There is another direction in which more might be done. We are advised to "keep the cradle full." What is more important than filling it is seeing that it is not unduly and prematurely emptied by tho inroads of disease. 'What miglit bo a lielp in this direction would be the appointment of public accoucheurs and maternity nurses. In all these ways the public health may be, and is to some extent being attended to, but more still might be done. Why not let the State take over the whole business of restoring as well as preserving health? The man of small means refrains from seeking medical aid, on account of the expense, when perhaps early treatment might mean the avoidance of serious illness. The wealthy get all this, and ye! tho poor man's nerves and n-i-, • ~ •. equally sensitive to "~'i ru the same organs in the ncli •.-:""'; tie. 'ile and activity of the rv"•'•-' laborer r-r more (jssentinl io his fi«-'Hy, «'.•>« the health 'of tl'.e e--'!*li=t In h:s friends. Witn n o-im ?niisi> of humor one might expect tiist Government wcrfd be cfpr.eir.l-

)y careful of the health of the workers as they are the revenue-producers while "they live; and that less attention might be given to the rich, since the State guts wealth out of their deaths!