The Performing Leopard and his Spots

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 487, 22 October 1948, Page 8

The Performing Leopard and his Spots

HE present-day tendency to regard ; education as a cure for all human was really, I suppose, the back-cloth against which Mrs. A. W. Gordon, Dr. G,. Blake Palmer and Eric Halstead cat‘Tied on their discussion in the Let’s Talk It Over session at 1YA on Sunday, October 3. The title was, "Can Education Abolish. War?" I had the impression that Mr. Halstead was handling a brief, rather than speaking out of his deepest: convictions. At any rate, he put up a good performance, and gave the hounds a run for their money, before he was run to earth. As might have been expected, a good deal of the discussion hinged on the effect of intensive education over a long period in Germany. The failure of modern ‘secular "enlightenment" to prevent disastrous distortions of the human mind is painfully evident in the history of that country; and Mr. Halstead struggled gallantly, but I think ineffectually, to throw off the heavy burden of disillusiogment. Of course, it is generally agreed that education is a good and necessary thing. But what sort of education? It may be replied, "The right sort’---that which is based on certain principles. But what are those fundamental principles upon which an education system should be based? That is a difficult question; we have not yet managed to answer it satisfactorily in the modern world. Obviously certain other principles, the "wrong" ones, can lead to most shocking results. Mrs. Gordon and Dr. Blake Palmer, with their measured scepticism, seemed to hint at something that Mr. Halstead was not prepared to allow into the picture: I suppose we shall have to call it Original Sin. A g discussion, this, carried on with smooth efficiency by the three speakers, and providing as much illumination of a vast and complex question as one could expect from a half-hour session. A