Article April 10, 1920 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Hortense Levi

[The West Australian Church News]

Christians cannot accept the view sometimes advanced which would regard a humane or liberal education as suitable only for those entering the professions, and which would estimate the success of the education offered the great majority of the population by its ability to qualify them for merely more efficient labor in their various occupations. There must be diversity of educational methods, because there are diversities of gifts. But the basis of differentiation should be differences of taste or of capacity, not differences of class or of income. The manual worker needs a liberal education for the same reason as the barrister or the doctor—that he may develop his faculties and play a reasonable part in the affairs of the community.

Is there nothing more required? Yes, the greatest thing of all. Men cannot live the full life by bread alone. There is something more wanted. Man is a living soul, and even here in this world it is true that righteousness exalteth a nation. Drunkenness, sexual depravity, dishonesty, idleness, wastefulness, are all dangers to a community. They hinder progress, they enfeeble the bodies and the minds of our people, and so are a drag upon prosperity. We have work to do to train the young, to be good citizens, in bringing back the wanderer, and lifting the fallen out of the gutter so as to make them men again.

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