EDUCATIONAL' METHODS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 32, 7 February 1934, Page 6

EDUCATIONAL' METHODS.

A WORD FOR OUR SYSTEM. (To tie Editor.) "Be Wise in Time" of course -wasn't. He berated our education system before troubling to verify his assumptions. He is surely misled when he gathers that nearly £4,000,000 is spent annually on our iState schools. How much time is spent on that "which he calk smattering? And anyhow, wha-t is it? "What psychologist or educationist had he in mind as an authority when he inveighed against the frequent changing from one subject to another? "Which subjects of instruction do not rightly belong to an education system when education seeks to develop the whole man? He thinks too much time is spent in teaching the child to become a "sport first"— too much time in the playground. Of course, he doesn't know —though, he should —that almost the whole of this time comes fioni the private time of those devoted teachers who weeklv np hours of their leisure to the all-round C development of their pupils. He fails to see why these methods "will make New Zealand great. Of course he does. He wants a method that will encourage our_ boys "to read and concentrate their minds, quickly" and "to observe closely"—a method which is in evidence all round him and he hasn't been able to observe it. He blames our schools because the Auckland Competitions Society fails. He does not say what percentage of our population was trained under our present education"system, and he does not know that our system is vastly different from that of thirty years ago —the system, if any, which failed'to produce the statesmen he desires, and the competition patrons whose conspicuous absence he deplores. When he feels disposed to attack a social service of which he obviously knows nothing, may I hope he will continue to "Be Wise in Time." CHAS. W. BOSWELL.