DEMOCRACY'S TASK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 September 1940, Page 7

DEMOCRACY'S TASK

BIG EDUCATIONAL FIELD

BUILDING OF CHARACTER AT FOOT.

REALISATION OF TRUE GOAL

Democracy's greatest task is education, writes Haydn S. Pearson in the

"Christian Science Monitor." It is the biggest job not only in cost; it is the biggest organised section of public service. But far beyond the casual matter of size is the crucial matter of results in'character. What shall the schools of a social order teach? In the dictator nations they teach those things which aid a dictator. In a democracy the schools leach in the secondary levels some 200 subjects. Each State runs its own education system: cities with good organisations are run by local school boards and administered through a superintendent. Rural districts often are laws unto themselves.

The big colleges and universities have added schools of education. There is a great excess of normal schools in the United States. Now the junior colleges are tilling an admitted need in higher education. What has been the effect on education? One candid business man says, “picayunish inconsequentialities.” Education has been peculiarly subject to fads and frills. New ideas have come and gone. Ideas are brought forth today as new that were tried and discarded a third of a century ago. Education divides into camps over methods, techniques, devices and procedures. One hears of Structuralism. Functionalism. Behavourism, Purposive and Hormic Psychology and Gestalt Psychology. And all the while millions of youth are needing the great, fundamentals that assure individual, national and international integrity of character! Let us be sure that the sight of trees does not obscure the forest.

The vital, pulsating needs of education are the single, sure, unsensational qualities that build character. All the paraphernalia and gaudy trappings may be thrown away. This is no brief for the elimination of what the public too often call "fads and frills.” Music, art, handicrafts, clubs —all are part of life’s richness.

Schools as a whole, however, must teach traits of character before they teach algebra or Latin. Education, in a democracy, while sustaining all necessary pillars of government and its security, must never lose sight of the fact that a democracy implies the ability of people to govern themselves.

In many ways our schools have grown top-heavy with their seven-syl-lable words that mean single things. We make a fetish of procedure and forget the boy and girl. We need, primarily, to give all citizens those qualities which assure honest and enlightened self-government. What are those qualities? Chemistry or English? History or arithmetic? Finger painting or building igloos of orange crates? Subject matter is merely a helpful tool in the realisation of the true goal! The qqualities that make men and women, the qualities that give a human being an understanding of life, the qualities that assure peace—are not discovered within the covers of an ordinary textbook. We need to throw away the picayunish inconsequentialities of every phase of life. In the field of education we must head our curriculum from the kindergarten through the last semester of graduate study with those foundation stones of honesty, truth, willingness to assume responsibility, and a deep consecration to high ideals which build true character.

When education realises this, and puts first things first, then mankind will realise his deep dream of a world of peace and universal good will.