"NOT UNHAPPY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 299, 17 December 1937, Page 11

"NOT UNHAPPY."

CHILDREN AT SCHOOL. SOME DISCIPLINE ESSENTIAL ** NEW EDUCATION." (From Our Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. "The assumption that children are generally unhappy at echool and go about in continual fear of punishment is quite wrong; but Life and Nature being such that punishment follows transgression of its laws, any system that does not enforce discipline is fundamentally unsound," said Mr. W. H. Stevens, principal of Wellesley College, speaking at the breaking-up ceremony. "Since the New Education Fellowship held its meeting here last July, I have been endeavouring to find out all I could about 'The New Education,' and more particularly of the practical application of the new ideals," he said. "I may say at once that the task not been easy, because the New Educationists—like the new politicians—are not so much concerned about giving a clear account of their proposals as in wholesale condemnation of the methods that they oppose.

"Shorn of ita verbiage, the '"ew Education declares that education (should be for citizenship, and specially for the right use of leisure; that bodily health is a primary necessity for the proper development of character and performance of the duties of a citizen; that the teaching of art should aim primarily at appreciation. Acquired from Plato. "This is tlie New Education, and it seems fair enough to me," Mr. Stevens continued, "though why these ideas should be termed 'New' i s far from clear, since these principles were laid down by Aristotle 350 years before the time of Christ, and they were not new even then, for Aristotle borrowed them from I lato, "who doubtless acquired many of them from Socrates. But if the ideas themselves are not new, perhaps the methods for 'fully and harmoniously' developing the personality will prove to be new. ' Here, again, I have had tome considerable difficulty in discovering what practical methods the New Educationists propose to introduce. I know that there are such schools as Summerhill, where the ahildren do just as they like, and where, to quote the headmaster: 'We have «. school where the child can follow his inner nature. If he wants to learn we have teachers to assist him. If he wants to plav all day, he must be allowed to do so. If he wants to swear— that is his own business.'

"I am sure that to change all the tedium of learning into the joy of selfexpression is a wonderful idea; but I think that there is just a bit too much of this free-and-easy no-compulsion business, the natural reaction to which is the iron discipline of the dictator."