The Press Saturday, November 9, 1929. Education and Business

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19772, 9 November 1929, Page 18

The Press Saturday, November 9, 1929. Education and Business

The November Bulletin *i <he t outer- j bury Chamber of Commerce breaks new I ground in treating the subject of education; and the compilers are inclined to apologise, but quite unnecessarily. There are two good reason 1 why such an expression of the broad views of the business community is welcome. First, they are as a whole reasonable in themselves and reasonably put, and free of faults which were at one time common in business men s demands on education and criticisms of it. The Bulletin neither attacks " frills " —it was the nsuaJ word —with a recommendation of plain, systematic dosage with the '* three R's," nor demands that the schools shall tnrn out ready-made employees for the bench or connter or desk. Second, one of the strongest points in the Bulletin is made when it connects the advance of other countries, in educational experiment, theory, and practice, with the much jrreater scope afforded there to local interest. Or, to turn the same fact over, it blames the process of centralisation, which has stifled local interest in education and tied its hands, for the want both of > pace and direction in educational movement to-day. But if we are to have not more centralisation bit less, ww must have greater public interest, better informed and better organised; and there is no section of the public better able to make its influence felt than the community's men of business, because there is no section of the public as strong in numbers, as well organised, and as well accustomed to thinking in terms of service to the community. The Chamber's Bulletin is a healthy sign of interest. What is even "more healthy, it shows that that interest has set before the Chamber objects for which its influence might be usefully exerted.

The Bulletin says a great deal, under different headings, about waste in education —not financial waste, but the much more deplorable human waste, the misdirection of intelligence, the application of training where it can do no or little good, the want of it where it is needed; and the Bulletin is unquestionably right in tracing a chief cause las it does in the following paragraph:

The largest part of our system, too, upon which most emphasis is laid, is subject to highly centralised State administration, under which it is difficult to avoid conservatism, regimentation, and routine. The training, grading, and classification of teachers, the inspection of schools, the methods of teaching and the subjects taught, all come under the direct control of bureaucracy; all tend to become formal and stereotyped, and but little practical scope is given for that experimentation and individual variation which is the basis of vitality and progress.

It is true that the new primary school syllabus lays great stress upon freedom, and encourages teachers to adopt individual methods, justified by success, even when they must set aside the syllabus to do so; but the exhaustive and exact instructions of the syllabus are themselves inconsistent with this counsel and encouragement of freedom, nor has the teacher much reason to believe that inspectors will test his work by standards applicable to it, instead of by the standards that mechanically test the pyxlucts of the machine. Education is stimulated by being systematised. up to a point; beyond, it is strangled. Most schools in New Zealand are suffering from slow strangulation; but the results make J very good statistical reading and are ! accounted to them for righteousness in ! Wellington. But in England, of any ; ten similar schools, each may. and ; probably will, be working to a different syllabus, without imperilling the system as a whole or its own success. The Bulletin has one considerable defect. It implies, in one section, far too high an expectation of the finished pupil. Many . . . appear to Have been subjected to none of that mental discipline which leads the trained mind eaaily to systematise knowledge. Hence they have little capacity for seeing things whole or tracing the relationship of inter-related parts. They may follow instructions given in detail, but cannot appreciate the simplest general principles and apply them to cases where the detail is different. They fail to ace why a job is done, what is its relation to what goes before and after, and to the general plan of things. The training they h»v« received . . . . results in the habit of diffused rather than concentrated attention, in lack of application, thoroughness, and the ability to decide and finish things off; it give* knowledge without understanding. and provides superficial facts rather than fundamentals and the methods by which those facts are found and related and applied in real life. Hence the mental equipment of those trained is lacking in depth, in direction, and in significance.

The finished pupil cannot have a * trained mind"; he can have only a mind benefited by some training, and capable of benefiting by more. The employer who comprehend* so much and so easily ought to consider that he « on familiar ground, his new employee on unfamiliar, and that hi* own skill and judgment were acquired by an experience the steps of which he has forgotten, while his employee is only taking the first of them. Under a test of general intelligence he would he lneky to come out with much or any advantage over the youth; and if he were to pass to the youth's ground of special interest and experience, perhaps wireless, or aviation, or or poetry, ha might alao— only at Ant,

of course —" fail to appreciate the -simplest general principle-: and apply u them,*' his attention rourbt wander, his application flicker, and his " ability "to tini-h thimrs off" exhibit itself in finishing them ail wrong. The be-t taught pupil is, when he leaves school, the pupil wh» can best be taught; and the employer must expect to pro due re-uits rather than to find them.