The White Ribbon. For God and Home And Humanity. WELLINGTON, JULY 18, 1918.

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 277, 18 July 1918, Page 9

The White Ribbon. For God and Home And Humanity. WELLINGTON, JULY 18, 1918.

Who has not heard of the Scottish divine who began a prayer with the words, “Paradoxical as it may appear unto Th* e, O Lord”? Adapting this admirable exordium to our pr - sent purpose, we may say that, para doxical as it may seem, the of education languishes because it hqs so many friends. There is much truth in the saying, “Save me from my friends ” History shows that it is quite possible for a cause that is at first he’d in almost universal detestation to become popular and victorious. In fact, the measure of the original odium is the measure of the ultimate triumph. Let T ruth be bitterly hated, and it has an excellent

chance of being ardently loved. L°t the cause of righteousness be violently assailed; it will soon be as warmly loved. So it has been with antislavery crusades, franchise agitations, religious reforms. But it is different with the cause that is mildly approved by all from the beginning. • There being no resistance on the one side, there is no provocation for enthusiasm on the other. Having the goodwill of ail, the cause never enlists the services of zealous missionaries, without which great momentum is not acquired. This last state is far worse than the first. This is the state of education. The difficulty in the way of educational reform is that the general public has not strong views about it one way or anotht r. Start a conversation on it with the man sitting next you in the car and he will endorse what you have to say about it. Removing his pipe from his mouth, he will charm you with sonu such original remark as this: “Yes, a most important thing, education. A fellow %:an’t have too much of it. Wish I’d Chad more when I was a youngster.” And then he will go on to some subject more congenial, the war, or perhaps the latest police case, horse race or picture show. This is the attitude of the general public—an attitude not of hostility but of something worse, namely, indifference. And it is the well-to-do, (Omloitablc public that is to blame, if blame is anywhere attachable just as mu> h as the poorer sections of the community. Indeed, the latter oftt n do much harder thinking about edu a.i >n. its me: ning and its purpose, than their more affluent brethren. Kven the professional element in the State is n< t fret- fr< ni the prevailing apathy. N > wonder then that th'“ cause languishes in spite of the earnestness of its true advocates. The few do, indeed, urge the paramount ini|>ortance of education and the ’heed of constant reform in its methods as the times change. The many agree in a facile and unreflecting way and there the matter ends, so far as they are concern'd. One of the weaknesses of democracy is that its rulers give the public only what the public, or the noisiest section of it, most loudly d'mands. Under the party system, a Government legislates as its partisans dictate. Now, the partisans of education are few, very few. They control no legislature and command no block

vote. No Government ever goes out because its educational policy (unless complicated by some religious element) was too conservative or too radical. Educational reform is not the stuff out of which election platforms are wrought. It may, perhaps, be a small plank in a platform, being inserted on the off-chance that it may come in handy, on the “any plank in a storm’’ principle. It isn’t the politicians who are to blame. It is the public, whom they serve, and try to please. Herein we see the reason why the educational grant is so meagre and pitiful. Though much requires to be done, and can be done only by money, the necessary means is withheld because the public do not demand it. The public is tepidly well disposed towards education ; but it regards other things, such as the freehold or the leasehold, alterations in the mode of settling industrial disputes, changes in the tariff or taxation, as being of more moment. The public wants Barabbas and it ge ts Barabbas. Now the thing to be done is to get the public to place first things first, and to realise that the claims of education should constitute the first charge on the revenue of the state. It is no use blaming the Minister of Education for the time being because the grant is insufficient. T he honest man no doubt does his best but can’t get any more out of the Government. It is no U"C blaming the Government, because it must phase the people or it won’t last. No Government will immolate itself for a cause which, like rhe rest of the public from which it is drawn, it approves, but without passion. Indeed it is no use blaming anybody except ourselves for not making education a more live issue in the community. The only practicable cause for true friends of education to follow’ is to cease to be rather apologetic and to become confidently insistent. The time has arrived for us all to commence a campaign in the piess, on platform, in the restaurant, in the home, everywhere- a campaign on behalf of education, to rouse the public from its state cf rather somnolent and good-natured indifference. I he public must be got to see that its own interests and those of its children require that our system of education be made ns efficient as possible. When Woodrow Wilson wrote about “making the world safe for democracy” he penned the classical defini-

lion of our war aims. Hut Prussianlsm is not the only enemy. Democracy is not of necessity made permanently safe by the crushing of militarism. Democracy implies freedom, and freedom, enlightenment. The only source ot enlightenment is education. An imperfectly educated country cannot be a perfectly democratic country. “Eternal Vigilance” Burke tells us “is the price of liberty” : we who profess to have the interests of education at heart must be not only vigilant in ourselves bu, the cause of vigilance in others to see that education is not relegated to the background of our nation. il life, but given its prop r place, which is first. Let us make no mistake. Education is not one of the most important concerns of a nation; it is the most important. When we get the people as a whole round to this way of thinking—and it will only be by tireless effort that we shall do so then the day will arrive when the educational grant will be commensurate with the importance of the end to be served. And what need there is for an increase in the grant. Better salaries for the teachers, that these, after years of preparation, may receive in a concrete form the State’s recognition that their work is skilled; better schools, roomy, spacious and hygienic; large, grassy playing fields in or near every school; more teachers, that the classes may be smaller and that each child’s individuality may be studied, and allowed for; that mechanical standardisation of product may cease; better equipment of schools, including such things as cinema apparatus and edu itive film stock, that the children may not be left utterly a prey to the ( rude sensationalism and tawdry vulguriti of the popular “movies”; clerical assistance in every school of any size, so that the headmaster, who ought to be and generally is, a man or ideas and experience, be not converted into a clerk, and be 1 ‘ft free to teach, and to show others how to teach ; clerical assistance, too, for the inspe :or->, f !i it these be not occupied during so much of tneir time with purely administrative work that could be done by others less highly skilled ih.an themselves. All these things and more are urgently needed. W’e must battl° on for them, stressing their iimportance wherever and whenever we can. “We must educate our Masters” to appreciate the importanc e of education,

Our system of free, secular, and compulsory education, for which men like Bowen and Stout have done so much, lias its enemies. Several of the Churches detest it, and would willingly change it. It is our duty, as well as our interest, to preserve it in its integrity, so that New Zealand be not peopled by mutually distrustful denominations, but by a society of men and women who have learned in the public sc h iols to understand and like each other. Denominationahsm and class distinction, which have created the private school for the children of the rich must both be routed. They can be permanently routed only by our making the public school the temple of culture and morals, by rendering it so effective an agency for promoting sound knowledge and noble character that it shall command the confidence of everyone, and compel even the unwilling to send their children to it lest they miss some advantage. To do this we must have the a yearly educational grant proportionate to our needs and purposes. To secure the means we must stress the worth of the_»*nd. We must be indefatigable in our advocacy; we must not rest till the public as a whole realise that first things must come first; and that among these latter the first, always the first, is education, the cause of which is fh° cause of the nation’s brain and heart, of the breath and soul oi its civilisation.