EDUCATION.

Wairarapa Age, 27 March 1920, Page 3

EDUCATION.

News and Notes.

A CONTRAST. "A poittpjiils "and ribbon-bedecked Louis Fourteenth of France rises in the Council Chamber before his minions of State and exclaims: 'The State: it is I.' In the first instance behold the semblance of cynicism and tyranny; in the latter the embodiment of the ideals of the new democracy."—The Educational Review. THE MAIN ESSENTIAL. When one considers in its length and in its breadth the importance of this question of the education of a nation's young, the broken lives, the defeated hopes, the national failures, which result from the frivolous inertia with which it is treated, it is difficult to restrain within oneself a savage rage. In the conditions of modern 1-fe the rule is absolute; the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or on sea, can move back the fingers of fate. To-day wo maintain ourselves. To-morrow science will have moved forward yet one more [step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be I pronounced on the uneducated.—A. M. Whitehead in "Organisation of Thought." IN THE FUTURE. The time is ripe for reform. Men's hearts are full of uneasiness in matters educational. Some thinkers, indeed, have already begun to shake with fear lest the nation should have already fallen hopelessly behind other European peoples in all the educative processes which go to make national progress sound and rapid. But it is not too late. The application of the driving belt to the machinery such as it is, is the chief requisite; but men of force are wanted to start it; to drive it along and keep it well oiled. Whether wo have men bold enough to do these things remains to be seen. ... If all this comes to pass—what will follow P This at least is safe to prophesy—that a people to whom a complete and co-ordinated system of education from the lowest stage to the highest unobstructed by the invidious bar of birth, is readily accessible will be less insular, less angular, less prejudiced than Englishmen have sometimes not without reason been regarded, and England will take a foremost place in the peaceful enterprises and competitions of all arts and industries.—"The Public Schools and the- Empire." H. B. Gray. EDUCATION IN CANADA.

The Hon. Dr. Cody, Minister of Education for Ontario, recently made a preliminary statement of his policy in an interesting speech which revealed progressive views. Dr. Cody placed in the very forefront of his statement the question of the more general extension of education beyond the limits of the elementary school. There had come, he insisted a far more general realisation of the fact that education does not stop "with the boy and girl age," and that a further compulsory period should be introduced. Important and essential everywhere, such a provision is unquestionably specially .mportant in Canada, with its very large foreign-born populaton. If the deals of Canadian citizenship are to be really and effectively inculcated, much more is called for. than the primary education of the boy and the girl. As Dr. Cody well pointed out, it is absolutely necessary that the foreign-born elements shall receive a "real education in British ideas and citizenship." Then Dr. Cody was emphatic also on the position which women should now be called upon to fill in education. Women, he declared, had won their right to take their share in the counsels and government of their country, and in no national activity should they lend their aid with more certain effect than in the matter of education. He hoped to see women sverywhere accorded places on school .boards and boards of education, and thus enabled to place at the service of their country a special ability which they undoubtedly possessed. Perhaps the most important of all the points touched upon by Dr. Cody was' the question of the payment of teachers. "The time is ripe," he declared, "and the people both in the city and in country are ready, to pay better salaries, and are realising that it is very much worth while to spend money for the securing of better conditions under which to develop their children."