"CRANKINESS" IN EDUCATION

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22893, 14 December 1939, Page 8

"CRANKINESS" IN EDUCATION

COMMENT BY COLLEGE HEADMASTER What he described as. “cranky schools” were commented on by Mr R. J. Richards, headmaster of Christ’s College, at the annual prize-giving ceremony of the school yesterday. There were some educational theories, he said, with which he had little sympathy. “I know there is a need for cranks in this world,” he went on. “Very often they are responsible for real progress, so that it is perhaps no bad thing to have a few cranky schools dotted about —I am speaking of the world generally, not of New Zealand particularly. “But crankiness can be overdone. Last year in England I heard of a parent who went down to inspect one of these schools which boast of their originality. He knocked for a long time at the front door. At last a small boy appeared and said, ‘What the do you want?’ ‘Good God,’ said the man, ‘what sort of a place is this?’ ‘There isn’t any God,’ was the reply, ‘and you had better get to out of it.’ Which he did. “Don’t think that is an extreme case. I can tell you more lurid tales than that. I have quoted it not because 1 think that all self-expression is bad; but to allow a boy or girl to grow up giving a free rein to every impulse is to my mind disastrous, I do believe in .self-expression; but I do believe also that it can go hand in hand with a sane discipline.” He supposed that Christ’s College could not escape the general criticism of New Zealand secondary schools, that they were too conservative and devoted themselves too much in the classroom to the old- round, of academic subjects, and outside the classroom to football and cricket. “It is argued that education should be adapted much more closely to the life of the people, and. designed to fit the mental capacity, tastes, and dispositions of the individual boy. “In the last year or two I have read a good deal about this in books and periodicals on modern education, and I have sometimes sighed rather sadly and wondered whether I was doing my job. And I have wondered, too, how many of these idealists have been headmasters. There are , lots of things we could do and lots oif changes we could make if money were unlimited.” Education was changing, said Mr Richards, and most schools had a more varied curriculum than 20 or 30 years ago. This applied to Christ’s College, particularly in the sixth form. A development in, the last year was that the farming class went out to the Canterbury Agricultural College one day each week for practical instruction.