What is the responsibility of our schools?

Last week we discussed the effect of the war on our young people and what can we do to make their adjustment to peacetime living easier.This week we are concerned with one institution in our country-the schools.What is the role of education in shaping a new generation of citizens ?What place does education have in a democratic country like Canada ?Education is clearly one of the potent forces in shaping future Canadians.What kind of education are we going to have?Can Education Change Human Nature?Never before in our history have we talked so much of the future.Since we live in times of world-wars and revolutions, it is quite natural that we often wonder whether our children will have a better time than we are having.To make sure that they will, we devise elaborate plans for a better Canada.There are many things in this Dominion which we hope to reform.Some peo- ple, however, are pretty cynical about our hopes for the future.What is the use?" they say."Things will never be any better since we cannot change human nature."It is, of course, quite true that men will always eat and drink, and love and hate; the essential facts of human life will remain the same as long as men inhabit this planet.But there is absolutely no reason to assume that our descendants will not be able to cope with the problems of life more successfully than we have done.That is why we should see to it that our children and young people are properly equipped to face their prob- lems.A large percentage of the population of Canada during the next half-century or so is living right among us, tearing down the dining-room curtains, and yelling when we want to sleep.By bring- ing them up properly, we ourselves can shape the future.Effective education is the way to do this.If we take the twin chil- dren of a rich man, and bring up one in a mansion, and his brother in the slums, it is very doubtful whether, after twenty years, we could recognize the latter by his aristocratic behaviour.Whatever may be the role heredity plays in moulding character, experts agree that education is of vast importance.Even conduct that seems completely "natural" proves to be, on further reflection, the result of education.If a perfectly ordinary man of thirty loses his job, he may be very unhappy, but we should consider it very unnatural for him to cry.But when our great-grandfather asked our great- grandmother to marry him, and she said at first no, it was a natural thing for him to go home and cry his eyes out.Any other conduct would have seemed to him unnatural.He was educated differently from us : that is why he behaved differently. Education Must Produce Useful CitizensIf education is so important then, we must see that our children get the right kind.

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