Old Educational Advantages

New Zealand Tablet, 15 October 1908, Page 10

Old Educational Advantages

More things go to constitute education than the swallowing and very partial assimilation of rags and tags and snicks and snippets of a sackful of 'ologies. . ' It is just as necessary as ever,' said theJLondon Spectator recently, 'to teach the poor the plain truths"of morality and- religion which the church walls taught the earlier ages. It is -an excellent thing that national education should now be an affair of legislation, but a national education -is" useless which excludes religious teaching. And people who are wise enough to evolve theories of education are not always experienced enough to know how very deep is the ignorance of the ignorant on some points which' are quite beautifully legislated for. The poor of the Middle Ages, with"' all thei" ignorance and their too-often-miserable social conditions, had certain educational advantages which our age lacks. They were taught by eye and ear all sorts of lessons of morality, humanity, and faith. The great placid oxen that have looked down for centuries on the toiling beasts of Laon, the picture of the ox and ass worshipping at the manger, the careful exposition of certain verses of the Bible which read differently to modern

ears —all these things were practical lessons to the unlearned So were their mystery. plays, iheir endless stories and legends of saints, and the * Bible stories they knew so well from pictures and carvings and plays.*