New Schools for New Worlds

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 237, 7 January 1944, Page 3

New Schools for New Worlds

T is not the fault of anyone in New Zealand that a cable message from London on December 17, though it was one of the most sensational cables of the century, attracted very little notice and excited no comment. It is not easy in wartime to think of anything but the progress of battles, and not easy to believe, whoever says it, that the best defence against another war is a more civilised generation carrying out the peace. It certainly requires some hardihood to suggest that the Education Bill now before the House of Commons, and summarised on Pages 4 and 5, means more to Great Britain to-day, and many times more to the Britain of the next half-century, than the sinking of the Scharnhorst. But to suggest anything else would be cowardly or blind. Even if the Bill does not pass the House its principles and possibilities are now fermenting in the public mind. Sooner or later therefore the proposals we have outlined, or proposals very much: like those, will be the law. Already they are the goal, and not merely the splendid vision. And they mean, to begin with, that England will at last have an educational system and not merely an educational muddle; something planned and not merely improvised; a plan for a nation and not for some privileged sections. England will have these things if it pays for them; and it will pay for them-in cash, in concessions (political and social), and in hard work and hard thought-once the possibilities get a firm enough hold of the popular imagination. They have in fact a firm enough hold already to guarantee a new England if England > wins its war. But we are by no means suggesting that the Bill will be passed this month or this year. It will be resisted by intelligence as well as by stupidity and selfishness; by religion as well as by irreligion; by bare necks as stoutly as by old-school ties. But it will win in the end because it levels England up instead of levelling her down, and does not attempt to exalt her to the moon.