OPEN COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXIX, Issue 9632, 12 June 1919, Page 2

OPEN COLUMN

This column, each Thursday, will be placed at the disposal of any reader who desires to contribute his, or her, views or experiences on any subject of public interest. Country readers are especially invited* to respond.

HIGH SCHOOL METHODS. (By Smith, Minor.) Thirteen, years old (on leaving Standard VI.): '"What next ?—Jiign School or the office, Latin grammar or ledger ?" Tnat antiquated, artificial system, the High School of to-day, still claims as its victims the sous of blind or shortsighted people nebulously aware that to give their offspring "every opportunity of getting a good education" is the plainest duty of all right-thinking citizens. Oftimes this important step is begirt with manifold reasons, oi which the chief merit is their, sincerity; and still more often is the misguided paterfamilias content in sending his son to conclude his educattion at a secondary school for no understanding whatever. For those new arrivals, drifting to-an . unplumbed anchorage, vyhat is tho outlook ;?■...

Much depends on the scholar himself, much more on the length of his stay, and most on the course he adopts. Too many primary school productions whoso abilities at elementary arithmetic were of a high standard find that their wits cannot" conquer the obscurities of Euclid. The genius of the spelling and essay class at the primary school finds that as a man of letters he cannot account for the vagaries of the Latin subjunctive, or the involved conjugation of "volo." His confidence in the power of his mental faculties is shattered, and bitterly he enquires as to the cause of his downfall. His congenital assurance forsakes him, his native ability is starved, and he sits at the bottom of his form throughout his term of schoollife. -So the State academic method reaps a baleful crop of mental imbecility. Many a commonplace man has attained to his deplorable mediocrity through this means. His inherent capacity has been trodden underfoot, disregarded' by Giant Convention —that humbug of an immature civilisation — who is the offspring of the unenlightened ages of the past. The pedagogue advances on his prey with clear conscience to cholte the pores of incipient genius with the unpalatable, dry-dust philosophy of Cicero, the moth-eaten eloquence of Virgil; and then, at last, adorned with the doubtful halo of a classical education, the cultured export of a New Zealand high school, unequipped for life as it exists, passes out to take up his responsibilities in the ranks of the higher-class bourgeosic.

A doleful portrait, but too often not an inaccurate one. It is a portrayal of the incomparable folly of our twentieth century edu/mtional scheme, the lack of percipience in parent and pedagogue, an utter disregard for the needs of the individual pupil, the deadening effects of the classical course, and, for thai, matter, of the whole system. For what appreciably is gained in burying the adolescent within a convent-like institution, shut from real life, teaching him xinsavoury obsoletenesses, and training his taste for certain ideals which, oh leaving school, he must needs abandon in order to_^ form an utterly alien table of aspirations ? Plainly this is the indictment: that the school which should have trained him up to concert pitch for the first innings of life ha« condoned—has conspired in—his prooccupation with pueralities. Prnwe<-« in athletics and, in lesser degree, gnocess in scholarship connote principles which, applied to fit into the life-pro-gramme of the farmer, business m:>n. and citizen, prove virtually misleading. or fallacious

But to avoid the snares of generalities and narrow the sphere of this article, what is more indicative of parent woolgathering or snobbishness or bigotry than the too-common practice of sending a. boy for but two years to a secondary school before he is turned loose in the world ? How much T<">tin does he pick tip in two years ? How much French ? And does such elementary enlightenment on these languages and on mathematics and science prove afterwards of any permanent value whatsoever ? Here are two immeasurably priceless years of adolescence which the authorities could employ in cultivating the imminent qualities of the youth, giving him thorough grounding in studies which are bound to be directly useful to him in his after-life, and which at the same time arc congenial. Too often the pupil comes to knowledge without wanting it. As the life of a tree comes from within, so must a true and perdurable education. Therefore it cannot be imposed from without. And that is-where the classics fail, since we want originality, and they don't give it. In some cases they are all right to give a grounding of taste— they don't give that to our " average boy " —for a period only, but no more.

Yet to asseverate that practical and serviceable education should supersede our present high school curriculum and the claims of a dead language or "pure" mathematics, calls forth the phonetic shouts of all the champions of classic culture. Taking the highest moral grounds, the apostles of athletics will fight to the death for the arrogant supremacy of the cherished, pastimes. The corresponding public school system .of Great Britain has been irrefutably condemned as antagonistic to the need of our time; yet, though the world is faced with years of competitive reconstruction, and the cry is for personality, originality, and creative genius, the nation concurs in recognising as the fount of its -sxipply for the four estates in the British Constitution an inheritance from the Middle _Apres, the natural foe of progress and individuality, the chaste foster-mother of the dulli commonplace Philistine.