CONFERENCES ON EDUCATION.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20788, 23 February 1933, Page 15

CONFERENCES ON EDUCATION.

RELIGION IN SCHOOLS. ALL-ROUND TRAINING. (rKOM OUR OVCK OOSaESX-OSOK^T.) LONDON, January t>.Mr Ramsbotham. Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, spoke on ' 'The Trend of Education" at the Conference of Educational Associations. "J anticipate that in our secondary schools and universities education will become broader and will be less academic," he said. "The simultaneous deelopment of both hands and brain will be essential to tLe welleducated person of the future. ' The future would belong to the nations whose citizens had received the best all-round training. Mr Kanisbothain said the glamour of the successful Victorian business man was gone. Even if taxation and the redis- [ tribution of wealth were not likely to j make the accumulation of large forj tunes very difficult. he uoubted j whether the desire for theui would pcr- | sist. I "The present depression will help to j make a virtue of necessity," he declared. "People will become content to do with less. Ostentatious display will cease to be practicable. The ludicrous fooleries of a few individuals s>-. endowed with more money than seas'* will cease to be good copy for gossipr writers, because the public will be no longer interested and may even become disgusted." Social Superiority. # Miss W. .Vlercier, Principal lor ! Whitelands College, Putney, said that j boarding schools which hail increased since Ibe war, had the danger mat they might lead to a cult of social superiority. •'lf we think of it," said Miss Mercier, 'even a school subject can be made into a social 'class.' (Laughter.,) I am sure you would all be able to tell which subjects in the curriculum are 'superior.' . I believe there are wo forms of one game, one of which is certainly the social superior to the I other. ■ "Now we see running right ihrougn the educational system a craving to make some sort of social capital out of it—to think of it not as a preat uniter but as the distinguishing mark " of a class." The Dalton System. ' . Mr A. Corlett, headmaster of the Greenaere School, Great Yarmouth., ex- : plained the Dalton system, j The plan, he said, was based primarily on freedom with responsibility, and | implied, not that the pupil should do anything he liked, but that he should do any subject in his programme whenever he liked, and that tlie exigencies of time-tables should not interfere with the time he wished to spend on t-liat subject. The boy gained a new dignity, developed a frankness with bis colleagues and teachers, and an independence which augured well for the future. It was real life brought into the classroom, because co-operation and interaction were necessary for social living. Class lessons were not conducted on class lines, but were of the conference type, where the boys were encouraged to state their difficulties. The remainder of the day was spent in free study, when a boy did what he liked, in what order he liked, at his own discretion. O.n backward subjects a boy spent extra time when the work on the other subjects was finished. Religion in Schools. '' The importance and place of religious education'' was the subject of discussion at a meeting of the Association of Assistant Mistresses. Miss G. A. Richards, the president, eaid there was increasing- recognition j to-day that any scheme of education was not soundly conceived' Unless it was based on a living Christianity. Among the young to-day there seemed to be a desire that the two sides, the spiritual and the material, should be recognised. The Bishop of Croydon considered that the right presentation of religion in tho schools to ; day was of paramount importance. It was only in Christianity, and not through any alternatives or competitors, that they could expect to find any kind of commanding or creative thing said or done which would help the world in its depression and in the profundity and width of its needs. There was a wonderful rediscovery of the spirit and meaning of j Christianity going on, and to counteract the ignorance that still prevailed they should point out that it was the I unedited, unexpurga.ted version of ! Christ as it came from the New Testament that needed emphasis. Professor Norman H. Baynes, speaking on the. subject of the Old Testament, said that ignorance about it was widespread. Whether that ignorance was to be deplored or not depended very much on the way the Old Testament was read, for the Old Testament was potentially a dangerous literature. If it was interpreted from the fundamentalist standpoint as the inherent work of God, then he could not help thinking it would prove a disastrous book. The Old Testament was a library; itwas the landscape of a nation; it was a progressive chronicle of advances and relapses, of conflicts with standards, until the record of that progress became the background and thought of Jesus Christ. Women's Economic Independence. At the conference of the National Union of Women Teachers, Miss H. ii. Walmesley (Birmingham) said that se-~ was. a stable but quite irrelevant factor, for its responsibilities were notoriously variable, and defied assessment on'any wage or salary scale. Women, therefore, must achieve their economic independence now; they must be paid as workers equally with men, not an the

cheapeners of labour or purveyors of cheap labour. The establishment of equal pay throughout both the professions and industry might cause some confusion of feeling, but it would undoubtedly leave their lheii colleagues with a much clearer vision of what was the real content and meaning of assumed superiority. Women in the industry of teaching must be the leaders in the attainment of this great aim. They must not be stampeded by reports of necessary retrenchment in national expenditure, i'or national expenditure indicated mainly political inclination, and not always wisdom in assessing' essentials in the national service. The experiment of financial equity for women was worth making, should be wade, and could .>c paid for even now. Industry must see to it that it did not close its own home markets in the near future by closing classrooms or schools now in the mistaken and disastrous notion that it was making an intelligent cut in- national expenditure. Use of Punishment. I'r P. C. Shrubsall, lecturing on "Tlie Place of Punishment in Child Training" before a meeting of the Child Study Society, said that corporal punishment was diminishing to a large extent in schools, but it was none the less necessary at times. The foundations of character should ,be laid before the child started school, and good habits should be inculcated in very early years, thus reducing the nee'essity for punishment in school. A child should not be punished for a lie due to a mistake, nor for experimenting in search of information to satisfy a curiosity. Threats of bringing a "bogy," making a child stay in the darkness, or calling a policeman could do infinitely more harm to a neurotic child than corporal punishment; and by the non-neurotic '.child' the threats were soon disbelieved. Unrestricted ridicule by masters and mistresses could dp more harm to the nervous system than any slight physical punishment. The physically defective child sometimes presumed on his weakness, and thought he should not bo punished, out he should be made to understand that the punishmsnt could, _and wOuld, be given, if necessary. Physical methods need not necessarily be used, but it was as well that all children slaottld know that they existed, and could be teed. Most healthy boys, if asked, would prefer physical punishment rather than any other, because they could get it over quickly.