THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1906. EDUCATION AND LEADERSHIP.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8321, 29 December 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1906. EDUCATION AND LEADERSHIP.

Mr R. B. Haldane, Secretary of State for War,' in the course of a recent speech, remarked that the man that helped one was the man who had the initiative, the thought, the self-confidence which knowledge gave, and which knowledge alone could confer. That was the man who rose in the public service; that was the man who would go forth and rule in the distant parts of the Empire. He had the kind of qualities that made a leader of men. There were two kinds of leadership, and they shaded off into one another by an infinite variety of shades. There was what was called in military language the higher command, and that was a new notion. In the old days the command was the written order, given out by the general before the battle in great detail which every officer had to translate into a literal reproduction of the words that were used. But as the science of modern warfare w developed, the armies became vaster, and the problems became more complicated, a great change grew up. The Bame principle applied equally to officers of State and to other walks of life. When they came to consider what the head of a great commercial undertaking required, they would find with the enormous growth of interests to-day that the new conception of the higher command and of the necessity for training subordinate leaders who were still leaders, who had to interpret to the initiative—that these things belonged to the new generation in which they lived, and they were essential. A few years ago Japan had been reckoned with those who were not civilised. To-day Japan, by singleness of purpose, by concetration upon science, by the dominant purpose of the nation to fashion its national character according to the highest ideals, had leapt with a bound into the front rank. What had done it? He, as the Minister for War in Great Britain, charged with the duty of studying the means' by which

other nations reached their places, could tell them what had done it. It was that Japan had built her military and naval organisation upon the highest science and on the highest scien-, tine conception, single-mindedly,' to put herself upon the level of her greatest contemporaries. Learning for learning's sake. So it was, and so alone, that they got the higher grasp. So it was, and so alone, that they learned to transcend their own limits. So it was, and so alone, that they became contented with their station in life, because they found then that the things that are the sources of power lie within and not without. In freedom of the spirit, that freedom which came only from contact with the highest the human mind had attained, lay the true source of power, and the true conquest of life.

In the course of a lecture on educa- ' tion in America, Mr Whitelaw Reid; the American Ambassador in London, said that, broadly ,speaking, religious instruction was not compulsory in any public schools in the United States, and was not permitted in most of them. Religious exercises at the daily opening of the school were long encouraged, and were still common, but seemed to be growing less so, especially in the great. cities. Where used, they generally included the reading of Scripture without note or comment. The New York State constitution [prohibited aid from public funds-to denominational schools, or to schools where any denominational tenet or doctrine was taught; and similar general in other /States. Enrolment in the primary schools in the different States equalled about 20 per cent, of the population, and the average daily attendance was ; about 69 per cent, of the enrolment. The annual cost was about £50,000,000. There was a general tendency to make attsndance compulsory between the (ages of six and fourteen. The "home rule" disposition of democracy left the business management of the schools to the people of the locality, but the State alone passed judgment pn the fitness of the teacher. Americans claimed for their secondary school system that it was the best means yet put int6 operation for placing within the reach of the greatest number of children the opportunity to climb the educational ladder as high as they could; and that the education so afforded tended to develop, even out of the masses of imported raw -material, the kind of citizen who had so far made the fortunes of the country. In 1902 there were in the 6,292 public high schools 551,000 pupils, and 105,000 in. the private schools. That meant that about one in every twenty-three of the youth of the land was pursuing some form of higher education, while the door was open to as many of the others as showed themselves qualified to enter it. The standard curriculum would include languages, mathematics, English, and science for about half of the four-years' course, and the balance would be made up of studies chosen by pupils or their parents. There was an abandonment of mere learning by rote and I of old routine, and a f greater-tendency to throw the student on his own resources and make him think for himself. As]to the colleges and universi- ( ties, there could be no doubt that, with reference to the wisest conservation of force, there were too many of them. One might count up to about 415. Of those, 275 were under ' some sort of sectarian or denominational control, and over forty were ( State institutions. The most notable recent evolutions in higher education had been the State universities, in which the United States approximated to the ideal of free university education for anybody qualified to .enter. There general characteristics were: Less prominence for the old .collegiate "humanities;" greater attention to science, particularly as | applied to agriculture and the industi'ial arts; greater variety and freedom of choice in elective studies; military training; and the admission of women. Half a dozen of them maintained practically as high standards as the best of the older universities. They drew fresh blood, and their chief strength from the common schools; they were becoming more and more the colleges of the common people, and their graduates were coming forward as the most prominent and the most useful of the people's leaders.