FRANK HEADMASTER.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 10826, 24 March 1932, Page 4

FRANK HEADMASTER.

Dr C. A. Alington, headmaster of Eton, at a Headmasters’ Conference recently said: — “The harassed schoolmaster grossly overloads his curriculum, starving every subject of its proper quantity of hours in a vain attempt to propitiate criticism. He forgets that if the average Englishman could not blame his own education, he would And it very difficult to account satisfactorily for his own inefficiency. "We put an entirely exaggerated value on knowledge as such. There are very few' things indeed that w T ’e can say with certainty that everyone ought to know. He must know mathematics in the sense that he must be able to add, divide, and subtract w r ith reasonable accuracy. He must know' enough of his own language to understand it w r hen used by others and to employ it himself. "When w'e have said this I believe we have exhausted the demands we have a right to make. Our funda’mental error is' to teach all subjects in the same wmy, and that the way which leads to expert knowledge. We have no regard whatever for the average man who is not intended to be ,an expert. Our examinations are too often of the type which is clever and are not —as they should be—adapted to the average boy.”