Adversity & Resilience: Education

Thoughts on Education as they appeared in the Queensland Times on Saturday, 14 May 1927:

The scholarship examinations this week again produced a great array of candidates. A good percentage of them are bound to succeed, and it is to be hoped that they will show a proper appreciation of the value of their prospective attendance at secondary schools. Each year. we witness a new number of students entering the portals of secondary education, but is the State receiving true value from these children? Are they attending the Grammar Schools and High Schools with a serious sense of the relationship of their studies to the future of the State? When the State awards a scholarship, it does not contemplate a giddy frittering away of time, nor some foolish idea, encouraged, we are afraid, by some very foolish parents, that attendance at a secondary school brings with it some peculiar sense of social as superiority rather does the State seek for an expression at duty to it, in the hope that citizenship may be strengthened and elevated. Many of the boys and girls who pass this year's examinations, will probably seek courses helpful to eventual industrial efficiency, but, even when education is narrowed in this way, such preparation should not lose sight at the idea of duty to the State. It is true that children have a duty to themselves, and that they should strive to achieve self-expression, but, if the self-expression is on true lines, it should be in harmony with the interests of the community as a whole. Apart altogether from industrial efficiency, there remain the big incontestable fact that the family remains the unit of the nation, and that, for a proper discharge at eventual family responsibilities those who are yearly passing through our secondary schools need to know a great deal more than efficiency in commercial and industrial activities. Our boys and girls should have their minds so trained that they should be equipped to meet the problems of earning a living, but life in a real sense is some-thing on a far bigger scale than the winning of wages or salaries, and for this bigger life our education system should have increasing attention.

 

Nowadays, it is common for politicians and others to extol our education system for the wide advantages it offers. Though the advantages press fine liberality, we have not yet reached a stage at development at which we may risk the thought that we have truly discharged our duty to the oncoming generation. Ideas of education are always changing. In Queensland, we have shown a respect for the importance of these changes, but we have to guard against the tendency to narrow the advantages available to children to lines of education not helpful to the ideal of true living. For instance, what will the successful candidates at this year's scholarship examinations learn from one secondary education system to assist them in the efficient discharge of parental responsibilities? What will they take away from the secondary schools to fit them for the duties of citizenship? These questions cover big problems, but it is to these problems that our education authorities will need to pay attention if the future is to witness to richer social developments. Earning a living may be said to fall under the category of indirect self-preservation, but a proper discharge of parental and civic duties calls for the best form of self-expression. Some people will be ready to sneer at the idea of the children of to-day being directed in some way about such future duties as the care and training of off-spring, but surely it is necessary that those who have to resume the responsibility of directing the development of future generations should have some knowledge helpful to the discharge of their duties. Should they not have some idea of the laws of life, and, since they will be charged eventually with the delicate work of assisting the development of dawning minds, should they not have some knowledge of the general principles accepted as governing mental processes? We are not sure how far our secondary system now goes to meet these great demands of the future, but, if we have before us the ideal of complete living, we must surely take into consideration the efficient discharge of the main responsibilities of life.

 

With regard to civic duties, there are surely important opportunities for our education authorities, especially as nowadays the problems of civic government present increasing demands for knowledge of such subjects as the laws of social health. The best asset a future citizen can have is a correctly formed character; but this character needs to be supported by some knowledge of general practical principles helpful to an alert intelligent citizenship. After all, a citizen may have a good character, and yet be without an intelligently directed civic consciousness. In some of the main responsibilities of life, we are leaving too much to chance. Our children are receiving a smattering of knowledge, or no knowledge at all, upon the subjects which eventually will become their real life's work or fall under the description of true social duties. Education is valueless if it merely dresses the mind with some showy display; it is of supreme value when it prepares the mind for a true discharge of the responsibilities of life. This is not meant by any means to detract from the inestimable value of art, literature, music, etc. All these are vital to the ideal of complete living, but they must not be thought to be the supreme things in life; with them alone, and with no knowledge of the practical responsibilities of life, any society would plunge into a hopeless condition of confusion.