DEAL WITH REALITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 159, 5 July 1916, Page 8

DEAL WITH REALITIES.

FRANK DECLARATION ON EDUCATION. "k MINISTERIAL SURVEY. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. . ■"'All educational efforts must in future be devoted to dealing with realities,*as contrasted with abstractions, formalisms, ' and pedantic studies," declares the jfiiiister for Education, in a memoramtuih on educational progress, in which he Submits valuable proposals to Parliament. "Modern kindergarten and the Montessori methods are at one end of reformed methods of teaching, and such subjects as practical applied science and economics at the otlier condemn a great deal of what lies between as mere beating of the air. All education must concern itself with the actualities and activities of life, and, in proportion to its advanced nature, must increasingly justify itself by what it does for the community. Thousands of secondary scholars are spending a fifth of their time at Latin, in which not 1 per cent of them can ever read, think or express themselves. They spend another fifth on mathematics, by which not 5 per cent of them will ever calculate or reckon anything. They spend about a-tenth of their time to study science, which; in the form adopted in many cases, does not widen their per; sonal interest in nature nor enrich their lives, nor render them of any service l to the world of industry about them. This does not deny that a- small percentage of our secondary and university scholars .do carry the study tOf* as "fruitful an issue as the present somewhat academic instruction permits them. The fact mains that the great majority of the ■scholars receiving the mostjexpensive edur cation we can provide spend under these three headings alone about a-half of their time in -what is for thcih mere futile pedantry and study of abstractions." The Minister adds: "It catt safely be said that primary education, with all its faults, is more progressive, more in harmony with the best educational thought and with nature powers of children, better organised, better controlled by inspection, more valued, and more heartily supported by public opinion than is thtf higher education." Mr. Hanan considers there are four' types of secondary education which seem to be necessary to meet new requirements:— 1. A university course'leading to the skilled professions. ! 2; A general secondary or general vocational course on modern lines, leaving out Latin and making conversational Trench the foreign language taught. 3. Continuation or a special vocational course. ' '' v - -4. Country secondary course. The basis of the seieetion of pupils for these courses should not necessarily be one of mere intellectual ability.