EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 114, 3 November 1911, Page 4

EDUCATION.

"I was educated," says the average man, "at such-and-such a college." He, of course, doesn't mean what he says, lie may have been schooled there, but no one has ever yet been educated at school. Bishop Welldon, before the British Association lately, stated that "the supreme object of education is to provide good citizens." We may believe that the word "citizenship" is as rarely heard' in a New Zealand school as "Mesopotamia." It is to be noted that the best scholars do not necessarily become the best citizens, or the most brilliant examiners the greatest specialists, but quite apart from the thumping of somebody else's wisdom into little heads, there is a chance in every school to instil 'bv precept and example the true duties of citizenship. "The supreme triumphs of educational skill are good men and women," said the Bishop, "good servants of the State." "The supreme aim of our educational method," we think we hear the schoolmaster say, "is to cram every head with the same kind of material and to get a high percentage of passes." Thus it is possible to turn out hundreds of children who have been adequately "schooled," but have not even the groundwork of education. No public school system yet devised recognises the infinite variety of the childish intellect, but every school if properly governed can lay the foundation apart from mere mechanical reiteration of ascertained facts and activities based on non-preced-ent, of the nobility of service, of good citizenship, good fatherhood, good brotherhood and good conduct. The creation of a sentiment, and a true "school" feeling, which is the essence of the success of many noble schools, is not unknown in New Zealand, although it is rare. Tt is the feeling that prevents a sailor from disgracing the Navy, a soldier from smirching the fame of his regiment, the miner from meeting a charge of cowardice from his mates. It is a feeling so superior to the parrot skill considered so essential to "education" that it has no relation to it. "Are our children." asked the Bishop, "receiving such a training will fit them to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices or duties, both public and private, of peace and war?" The answer is, of course. "No!" and the "No!" may come from all over the Empire. It would be interesting for a primary schoolmaster in New Zealand to ask his pupils what a citizen is.