Thursday,. Sept. 13, 1934
THE JEWISPL^^^W^ BULLETIN
Page Nine
Trends in Modern Education
By PROF. G. M. WEIR, Minister of Education, Government of B. C.
"VX THAT trends are already discernible which promise to ^ ^ assume greater proportions in the not distant future? It is a truism to say that both the Social Order and our Educational System are at present in a state of ferment and transition. Former social values, attitudes and beliefs are being challenged, sifted, and in some instances discarded. Education as a social process fails, in part, because there is little-agreement among our citizens generally, or even among our leaders, as to the kind of society that education should produce. Obviously it is not the function of our sttae-supported schools to make Communists or Fascists, or any other kind of ''ists," but rather to make enlightened citizens who can appreciate the good in all nationalities, cults, or parties. Hence a broad training in the understanding of our social problems from an impartial standpoint, rather than from the point of view of the propagandist, seems desirable; and fortunately our schools and colleges are better equipped and staffed than formerly to give such a training.
Moreover, the expression "Training for Citizenship" has assumed a new significance in a world that Science has contracted into a vast neighbourhood. In the schools of the future there will be offered more courses than now in Elementary Economics, in Public and International Relations, and in Social Ethics, if the citizens of tomorrow are to develop an international, as well as a national, outlook and to co-operate wisely in the soluiidn of bur economic, political and social problems which are becoming increasingly acute.
It is probable, then, that educated citizens of the future will be called upon to participate more actively in public life than their parents did. In additions, our educational expansion must provide for more general education for adults; for education, properly interpreted, is not limited to the years of schooling, but is a life-long process extending from the cradle to the grave. Training for leisure, for intellectual and aesthetic employment in period of physical inactivity which may be due to technological advance, will doubtless receive-greater emphasis in the immediate future than at present; and in the education of all dasses greater stress will be placed upon spiritual values—upon Wisdom, Strength and Beauty in the weaving of the fabric of_ individual and national character.
The education of the future will also probably pay greater attention to the training of highly-gifted personalities for the purpose of humane leadership. The Social Sciences, which have lagged behind the Physical Sciences, will probably lay greater stress upon the deyelopment of individual initiative and upon the increasing of the sense of moral and social obligation. The laws of individual and social heredity cannot be successfully thwarted, nor may they with impunity be ignored. The atti^ade of certain levellers, Or socializers, who would ignore individual differences and reduce the product of the school and society to a sort of drab steam rollered uniformity—such as woidd conform with the regimentation of dictatorships—should be resisted. The science of human relations will flourish best under enlightened freedom—^freedom under just and beneficient law which education of the future should consciously seek to foster and propagate. "A social order within a nation," writes Owen D. Young, "must strive not so much for imattainable equality as for manageable equilibrium." How best may this equilibrium betwejen individual initiative and social obligation be attained without falling prey to the licence of anarchy or to the despotism of a blustering Hitlerism? Can democracy be made suffi-cienlty enlightened and tolerant to solve this problem? Herein lies a challenge for the schools of tomorrow.
In Mr. R. P. Butchart'o Sunken Gardens, Victoria
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VICTORIA, B. C.
Victoria Scenes In Siiliouette
A city, like an individual, has to man you stop to chat with on the make, up its mind as to what trade cliffs in Beacon Hill Park, while or profession it is going to follow lokoing at the Royal Swans in Elk as its main means of livelihood. Lake, admiring the luscious foliage Up to the present Victoria has not- resplendent with flowers in Mr. been able to come to a final deci- R. P, Butchart's sunken gardens, sion. Where else will you find a examining the old charts of the city which is essentially residential pioneers and discoverers in the but which is also a port to which Provincial Parliament Buildings, ships from all the seven seas come catching a forty-pound spring salon their lawful occasions; obvi- mon in Brentwood Bay, playing ously a growing and natural sum- golf in view of the snew-capped mer holiday resort; but which at Olympic Mountains, browsing for the same time has been willing to rare volumes and antiques, in the invest public money in fostering curiosity shops so reminiscent of industries; a far western city, but Charles Dickens—the man, I say, with a distinctly old country atmos- that you speak to thinking he is a phere; an old country city where native-born Islander you will most one meets picturesquely garbed probably find came to Victoria citizens of the Orient, native Indi- from the highlands of Scotland or ans and wanderers from every the shires of England, the blue-country in Europe; a city known ridged mountains of Virginia, the through the world as very English coast of Maine, or the valley of the and yet which boasts the largest St. Lawrence. Victoria is, in short. Burns' Club in the world, not ex- at one and the same time, one of eluding Scotland itself; a city al- the most insular and most cosmo-leged to be rather slow and sleepy politan cities of its size on the but which was the first place in North American continent. Western Canada to instal tele- Yet it is essentially British. The phones, operate street cars, and winding streets, the houses that publish a daily newspaper; a city are homes, the walled-in, sheltered of a hundred contrasts and as gardens, the tree-shaded country many paradoxes; a city that has lanes where the motor car is never stubbornly refused to be standard- seen nor its noise heard, the ized and persists in being itself tweeds and cheviots, and good lea-and leading its own distinctive ther brogues and boots. The stiff-
life.
necked British race have not al-.
It was the British that discov- lowed climate to change their char-ered the Island now known as Van- acteristics in any essential way. couver, and on which Victoria Or perhaps we ought to say that stands, and stamped It for their the climate oJE Victoria is so sim-own. Sir Francis Drake, in 1579, iiar to that of the southern coun-looked up the coast from California ties of England that the race re-and In the lordly manner of those mains British here just as it would spacious times, claimed all the ter- have done if it stayed In the shires ritory to the north on the Pacific of the Old Land, for Queen Elizabeth, under the People coming to Victoria natur-name of New Albion. Captain ally expect to find a pocket ediUon James Cook visited Nootka on the the great cities of the Pacific west coast of Vancouver Island coast. Instead they discover a whilst sailing around the world in community different In a thousand 1778. and Captain George Vancou- ^nd one aspects. That Is why trav-ver circumnavigated the Island In ^^^^^^ ^resh from sights and scenes 1792, being, Incidentally, the flr.^t other lands will, in the majority man to do so, and annexed it to ^ases, agree with the lady who Great Britain. said, after seeing Victoria. "So dlf-
It Is true that some Spaniards ferent, but so very Interesting and had sailed as far north and even beautiful—yes, beautiful!" planted a settlement at Nootka, can compress the whole de-
biit Spain did not make aiiy"great scriptlon of I'ietofia^inid the two efforts to retain the Island. After words—^unique beauty. Or we can the departure of Captain Vancou- enlarge it into Mr. Rudyard Kip-ver in 1792, except for the occa- Ung's famous word picture, "To sional visits of fur traders, the realize Victoria you must take all Island was left in the possession that the eye admires most In of its native Indians until 1843, Bournemouth, Torquay, the Isle of when the Hudson's Bay Company Wight, the Happy Valley at Hong decided to move their fort from Kong, the Doon. the Sorrento, and the State of Washington, which Camps Bay; add reminiscences of was then being transferred to.Am- the Thousand Islands, and arrange erican ownership, to_ British Col- the whole around the Bay of Nap-umbia. and chose the site of the les, with some Himalayas for the present city of Victoria, naming background."
their fort after the great British Begi^es her own distinctive
charm, Victoria Is the gateway to
since that date succeeding a thousand and one holiday play-waves of immigration have swept grounds. Geographically. Vancou-up to Victoria—from the gold fields ver Island is by no means big, as of California to the gold fields of countries are measured out in the the Cariboo; from Eastern Canada great West, but its 15,000 square and the Canadian prairie provin- miles comprise a continent in minces from Great Britain and from lature and there is a wonderful the European Settlements in the diversity of scenery within its Orient. length and breadth—285 miles by
Of course, the waves receded, approximately 48. Here are fertile but in every instance they left a river valleys, mountains and hills number of new residents. Many of clothed with evergreen forests these pepole naturally enough where game abounds, rivers, lakes tried to change Vicotria into a and streams well stocked by Na-semblance of the cities they had ture with rainbow, cutthroat and come from. They did not succeed, steelhead trout, and sea estuaries but, on the other hand, Victoria and bays In which the big tyee, did change them into Victorians, spring and cohoe salmon are This is a habit Victoria has. The found.
,t-rr~i-- -4-v^.
Hatley Park, one of the larger suburban residences in Victoria