PRIMARY EDUCATION.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XL, Issue 12541, 12 May 1915, Page 1

PRIMARY EDUCATION.

To the Editor.

'•sir, —The thanks of all parents arc due to Mr Kelly for his able articles on primary education, and to you for your editorial comments thereon. By mostpeople the- efficiency of a school is judged by the number of pupils who gain proficiency certificates, or, as. MiKelly so aptly puts it, have reached. "the end of tiio penny section." But Mr Kelly would have us look beyond that—-to the mintLforming and charac-ter-building, and the "tendency to behavior" of our children. At no time in , tlio world's 'history has there been more need of men and women who hare the courage to do the right in spite bf opposition, who have powers of-moral eiu durance and patience and a strict adherence to right convictions and principles. And yet how many there are whose actions and morals are haphazard, who "go with the majority," or who only look to their own temporal benefit. The historian Fronde .says: "From the earliest times of -which "we have historical knowledge there have always been men who recognised the distinction between the nobler and baser parts of their being. They have perceived that, if they would be men and not beasts, they must control their animal passions, prefer truth to falsehood, courage to cowardice, justice to violence, and compassion to cruelty. Human history has been little more than a record of the struggle which began at the beginning and will, continue to the end, between the few who have had ability to see into the truth and loyalty to obey it, and the multitude who by evasion or rebellion have hoped to thrive in spite of it." Tiro teaching of the bare facts of history has little moral value to the child: hence Mr Kelly's plea for textbooks on the lessons to be deduced from history is a- most laudable one. The story of Magna Charta. of the struggle for American independence, of the French Revolution, of the Napoleonic wars, all prove the error of the principle now so prominently before us — that Might is Right—and show that spiritually and morally "the wages of :>in is death." —I am, etc.. CONSTANCE FRAME.