SOME AXIOMS OF CORPORATE EDUCATION. 



By Jas. Aiken. 



Two writers in recent numbers of " Timehri " have succeeded, in the 

 course of interesting articles, in presenting the history of the organisa- 

 tion of education in the colony from very opposite points of views. It 

 is characteristic of thought about education, not only here but the world 

 over, that opposite points of view 7 are possible ; which merely shows 

 that the science of education is still in want of its Xewton and its 

 Principia in which elementary laws shall be laid down authoritatively 

 and finally. 



In the disputes between opposing schools of educationists about the 

 merits of Classical as opposed to Technical curricula in Secondary, and 

 Literary as opposed to Practical lines of teaching in Elementary Educa- 

 tion, we are reminded of the scholastic debates over the causal relations 

 subsisting betwixt the man and the pig, when a string links them 

 together and a goal of aspiration is postulated. When delivering an ad- 

 dress on '■ Practical Aims in Education " recently. I was particularly struck 

 by the phrase " learning for its own sake " turning up in the remarks 

 offered by one of the teachers in my audience. 



Perhaps no shibboleth has ever been responsible for more sloppy 

 thinking about education than this trite mascot of the conservative 

 school. It is supposed to be a complete answer to all advocates of a 

 rational system of teaching, which seeks to give full consideration to the 

 human subject in esse and in posse, the child what he is and what he shall 

 become. It assumes that a liberal education consists in acquaintance 

 with a certain range of facts and verbal exercitations which have, by 

 force of circumstances unguided by any very clear principle, come to be 

 regarded as constitutino- " Polite learning. " There is in it an echo of the 

 century or so in which the idea prevailed that, for a gentleman who in 

 Parliament had to deal with the administration of the agricultural, in- 

 dustrial and social development of a long-suffering body politic, the only 

 equipment needful was a pretty turn in riposting with Latin quotations. 



When the history of learning in Europe is considered, however, it 

 will be seen that such curious phenomena as that mentioned are quite ac- 

 counted for by the growth under monastic conditions of the ideals by 

 which it was governed. For several centuries after the influx into 

 England of the Norman and his following of rough men-at-arms, it was 

 scarcely fashionable for a knight to be able to w^rite his name. Naturally, 

 when these stout fellows of humble origin found themselves, by a for- 

 tunate sword-stroke, barons with unaccustomed manors, serfs and power 

 and a retinue of faithful retainers, cousins, brothers and fellow villagers, 

 for whom they had sent to their native hamlets, they retained lor genera- 

 tions the atmosphere of the plough land or the smithy. The engaging 



