EDUCATION AND HAPPINESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 732, 24 July 1953, Page 5

EDUCATION AND HAPPINESS

SirI have listened with much interest to the series Pursuit of Happiness, and was impressed by the dictum of the Principal of Westport Technical High School, that happinéss could only be found in work. I could not agree more earnestly. But immediately I am _ confronted with the problem that is created by our national education system and its determination that every advantage of civilisation shall be acquired by every child with the minimum of effort. I have watched the development of this determination over. a long period. I have shared the enthusiasms of Seddon and Savage and Fraser, and I have arrived at the point where everything those idealists aimed at should be in full operation, bearing full production: And what do I find? The question staggers me, and I can only answer it by a parable. There was once a State Pig Farm, where little pigs were fattened up to become bacon, and the State was very proud of it. However, those who were close to the farm saw that the little pigs -were not getting fat enbugh. They informed the State, and the State sent inspectors and experts to investigate and to advise. As a result, the farm was reconstructed, with every device. that could induce wee pigs to become great pigs, But still those piglets languished. There was a Funny Old Man at the Pig Farm whose job it was to sweep up after the pigs. He worried about the medgteness of His job, about the good > food that lay in the troughs, untouched, until he drained it away; about the Awful Waste. One day he had an inspiration. He took it to the Manager, who smiled kindly, ‘but. listened. "Them pigs," babbled the Ancient, "they got everything, but they’m still measly. And I know why." He paused and drew a long, brave breath: "They / don’t take the trouble to» eat." _ That, Mr. Editor, is what is wrong ‘with our education system. It provides everything-except. the incentive to learn. It keeps great lumpy boys at school, wasting the taxpayers’. money and the teachers’ abilities, when they ‘should be out at work, coping with the decline. of our national: economy. It spends millions lavishly (in the fatuous _ delusion that spending millions is bound to achieve something) on enormous schools, numerous (but piffling) salaries, free train rides, and the repair of wilful destruction. _ The struggle that made Seddon and Savage and Fraser into outstanding men has, by their very act, been removed from this generation, who will, thereupon be incapable of producing outstanding men. A generation of drifters, whose cynical disregard of values, social and moral, is responsible for vandalism, waste, and deteriorating production, is rapidly taking the place of the workers who built this country.

D. R.

HAY

(Upper Hutt).