MODERN EDUCATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 281, 25 November 1921, Page 7

MODERN EDUCATION.

NO ORAMMING. (By Teleyraph.— Parliamentary Reporter.) •WELLINGTON, Thursday. That mere erannning of dates and facts is not the ibest method of educating children is the contention of the Chief Inspector of primary schools. He indicates in his annual report that it k the aim of the new education to enable the pupil to build up, by his own efforts, a body of ueable knowledge, not a mass of second-hand information, most of Whioh, though reproducible on examination papers, is ill-digested and unserviceable. The resemfbt&noe 'between Chinese and Egyptian methods of instruction, aays the report, and much in our own method must be apparent even to the superficial observer, and the absurdity of the so-called education test given to the Oriental is not entirely absent from the appraisement of the work in New Zealand schools. Under newer methods of instruction the pupil may 'have a smaller body of memorised information, but what he has he holds, •and can use. The presen.t-<lay pupil does not equal the pupil of the past in repeating a long list oft coast features of a country, hut he knows more real geography. He cannot, as a rule, give one' a list of dates and historical events, but history is of more vital interffit to him. He does not know as many absurd rules in arithmetic, 'but he has an infinitely greater love for reading and much greater facility in English composition, and if the new education can secure the interest and whole-hearted co-operation of the pupil, the oldtime troublesome problem of maintaining discipline will disappear.