VALUE OF EDUCATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 299, 17 December 1937, Page 12

VALUE OF EDUCATION.

PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY.

"STEEPED IN TRADITIONALISM."

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

PUKEKOHE, Thursday

"Steeped in traditionalism, we teach certain subjects because we ourselves had to learn them, and because we don't know what wc could teach if we threw .theiu .over.", stated the principal, Mr. R. C. Clark, M.A., to-day at the annual prize-giving ceremony of Wesley College, I'aerata, when speaking on the subject of education.

Mr. Clark said that tliey taught boys and girls languages and mathematics which had little relation to the lives [ they had to live or the problems thev would have to meet. The paper recently set for the University entrance and school certificate examination in arithmetic would illustrate the point. Whether the paper was. a reasonable three or four years' course lie was not prepared to say, but he did think it was tiue that 99 per cent of the candidates having answered, or not answered, the questions, would promptly forget them, and fortunately, except in the foul clutch of circumstance, they would never in life have to meet anything like them again. Marathons with manipulation, skyscraper fractions and calculations suited for princely stockbrokers were artificial and. divorced from life, which for good or ill had adding machines, slide rules and log tables. The real educational problems of today were not so much the training of successful business men, or even°the equipment and inspiration of research scholars, hut involved the wider <r ro wth of personality and social relationship, and the solution of inner as. well as outer conflicts. A large part of present, day education was concerned with a certain intellectual dexterity and left untouched or treated as epiphenominal matters of the soul or will, forgetting that man was still largely a creature of instincts and emotions.

The four <rreat messages a school had to impart to-day, the speaker added, were intellectual integrity, freedom from prejudice, sensitiveness 'to beauty, and an understanding and sympathy with their fellow men. These were not to l>e achieved by an appeal to the intellect alone, hut involved the soul and will of man. At root, the great problems in education to-day, as at all times, were ethical, moral and religious. Tlicy must encourage and work, therefore, for a freedom which recognised this and loosened the sliacklcs of the past, that education might better equip bovs and girls to approach with poise and assurance the problems of life to-day.