The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1917. THE SHAPELESSNESS OF LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 March 1917, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1917. THE SHAPELESSNESS OF LIFE.

At a critical time like the present it is not surprising to find that the subject of education is receiving especial attention in Britain as well as in the Dominions. We have already emphasisco the urgent need for technical studies as well as research, but the chairman of the famous engineering firm of Cammel Laird & Co. (Mr. Hichens) recently expressed some very sensible and pertinent opinions on the subject of education from a practical point- of view, before a body of headmasters. The subject is one that calls for careful thought and earnest effort if the Empire is to accomplish the great task with which it is faced in the future. What Mr. Hichens asked for was boys who are taught how to live and how to deal with men rather than for examination prodigies. His principal constructive suggestion was that boys who desire to enter engineering works should enter those works at sixteen or seventeen, or some two years earlier than at present. They should take a practical course before they go to the university. Tt.ere is very much to be said for such a plan. The boy would, we presume, pass the universiij entrance examination before leaving" school and while fresh from his books. Or it would, of course, be possible to adopt the Scottish and German plan uf a "leaving examination" at school, which counts as a university matriculation. The difficulty in the past has been that parents, rather than boys, have evinced a preference for "safety first." "During recent years,' said Mr. Hichens, "boys have been taught to go in for the safe thing"—to choose the post which bring? in £IOO a year, and seldom gets beyoim £2OO, in preference tc the profession in , which the young man has to make his own way, with the risk of being turned adrift if he is not capable and energetic but with brilliant prospects if he succeeds. This playing for safety is a veritable sign of weakness, inferring lack of courage. Of course there are large numbers of boys who are not fitted for battling their way up the ladder of life, being merely wage-earners, devoid of initiative and lacking in selfreliance. It is not to this class, however, that the Empire must look for help in the coming strenuous industrial and commercial struggle, yet it may well be that if they had been judiciously educated they would have provided many leaders in the commercial and economical campaign. It has to be realised*that

education is not a personal matter, but a national necessity, and if the Empire is to, as it must, prevail as the leading Power in the arts of peace as well as in the arts of war, then a great change must take place in the methods of training the young for their future part in Imperial affairs. We muss not be toe proud or too unwise to profit by Ger. miuiy's example as seen in her educational methods, which all tend to nation." al supremacy. Research is the busines? of the German university; the same cannot bo said of the British institution. It is not the case that the classics have been jettisoned in Germany for science; on the contrary, in the learned professions the classics are compulsory. Where Germany has been strong has been in the general desire of her people for knowledge, their willingness to listen tc the expert, and their pp.ssion for systematisation. Mr. Hichens deplored the "shapelessness of life" which a public school education in the past has so often produced, and which means, we take it, a life without system or principle. The truth is that the profession of teacher is more highly honored in Germany—where Bismarck lost no opportunity of conferring dignity on it—than in Britain, while Germans for two generations have systematically studied education and have not been try experiments. The. war is teaching us many things, but its chief lesson lias yet to be learned—the urgent need for reform in educational methods. The Empire has been caught napping, so to speak, and has had to suffer for that want of systematisation which Germany has utilised to such purpose. We are all seeking the best methods of modernising and improving education, not as an ornament, but as a factor in the progress and prosperity of the Empire as a whole and the advancement of all its units. New Zealand cannot afford to lag behind in this matter, which should be taken in hand without delay. There is much to jettison in our present system and much to add, but the want of direct methods leading to national ends is the chief object that needs attention.