SCHOOL COURSES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 51, 24 November 1930, Page 12

SCHOOL COURSES

New Education System ENGLISH OPINION The “Eleven-Plus” Theory Interest attaches to the opinions expressed in the “Teachers’ World,” an English journal, upon the question of passing children from the primary to the secondary schools after the age of eleven, in view of the proposal by the Recess Education Committee that the system should be adopted in New Zealand. It is stated that the reorganisation of the schools and the introduction of more extensive systems of work had not proved satisfactory, and that the standard of ability had not improved. The journal was first in the field as an advocate of the ‘ eleven plus” policy of the English Board of Education, yet after admitting it has been identified with every development of that policy it declares: “By virtue of that close and continuous contact we assert without fear of contradiction that nobody is satisfied with the results obtained from the expansion, not so much of curricula a» of syllabuses, that has attended the reorganisation of the schools.” Nobody in particular is blamed for the failure of the system, for it is admitted that the board no less than the schools was passing through a period of transition. The opinion is expressed that it was easier to reshape the administrative organisation of the schools and classes, difficult as that was, than to remould the content of the teaching programmes. It was pointed out that the board had in fact warned teachers and authorities alike against regarding the tentative remodelling of syllabuses as anything more than experimental. “Too Much Attempted.” “The reports we have received from head teachers and administrators all over the country show with disquieting unanimity that in the framing of schemes of work too much is being attempted,” the journal adds. “Everywhere we hear of teachers harassed by overcrowded programmes in various subjects and discouraged by the feeling that they have time to teach nothing thoroughly. The new syllabuses, for senior schools particularly, drafted by education authorities and head teachers, are in too many eases far too ambitious. “Courses are being planned which cannot be covered in teaching weeks of 27 hours, except in the most sketchy fashion. In the junior as well as in the senior schools there is a danger that the children’s minds will be filled with a hotch-potch of materials, vivid and intrinsically excellent no doubt, but orderless and unrelated, while the foundations and framework of their learning remain shaky.” “We shall be called utilitarian—and we are, though not in the narrow sense of that term,” the journal states later. "The function of the junior school, for example, is to train the child for a vocation, for it prepares him to be an efficient worker in the senior school. The real work of the junior school is therefore to provide a thorough and patient apprenticeship in handling the tools of knowledge. The grounding in the essential subjects of a prima-y education will be vivified and humanised by the good teacher, but the grounding must come first and remain first. Greatly daring, we suggest that the same principle holds good for the senior school. The pupil here is able to apply himself to a wider range of subjects, but more emphasis on the essentials of those subjects would save the teacher and his classes from that sense of congestion which the overloaded syllabuses of many schools are producing. “It is folly to assume that because a child has graduated to the senior school he is ready to plunge into the finer detail of any subject. There will be little enough time even if he stays until he is 15, to cover, for example, the history that matters—the main movements, the gregt names, the key events. And so with all the subjects, diffiuseness of treatment must give place to broad outlines. Within the scaffolding of the junior school rises the framework of the senior school. If the latter is strong, spacious and bold and simple in its lines, it has fulfilled its purpose. The mistake is too often made of regarding the senior school as a building to be completed and even furnished.” A Double “Slumming.” Vague generalisations about "secondary education for all” were apt to blind people to the fact that the mass of the pupils would be less intellectual, for the more clever would be twice “skimmed” — once for' secondary schools and once for central schools, said the journal. It was not therefore a question of syllabuses, of making them more advanced, but rather of pruning judiciously the existing courses and of selecting and teaching the fundamental things. Multum, non multa, should be the motto of the senior schools. The opinion was expressed in another issue that over-ambitious syllabuses were definitely working harm to the children in elementary schools. There had undoubtedly grown up an inflated notion of the potentialities inherent in quite ordinary children. Reorganisation had not made any change for the better in the average ability of the pupils in the schools. In the case of the new senior school the level of ability was distinctly lower than before reorganisation was accomplished. There was the additional depressing effect of the inclusion of dull and backward children promoted on an age basis who formerly remained in the lower part of the school. New syllabuses drawn up in consequence of reorganisation should therefore be characterised not by extension and comprehensiveness but by intensiveness and compactness. In this connection the writer points out that he has in mind those syllabuses and schemes of work in the ordinary subjects which, by their pretentiousness and elaborateness, tended to flatter the teacher rather than to benefit the child. No scheme of work could be regarded as properly framed if it did not lead to the possession by the ehild of a quantity of really definite knowledge, a framework upon which he could build for himself in later life. Raising School Age. Reference to the raising of the school age, also proposed to be put into effect in New Zealand, is made by Dr. H. G. Stead, director of education for Chesterfield. in an article in the “Parents’ Review.” He states that the. English elementary school originated in the desire to keep children from the factory and the technique it developed was the technique of the larger class. In the course of time additional years were added to the school life of the average child, but little thought was devoted to the more important question of the manner in which these years should be utilised. “If the additional year now proposed is to be regarded simply as a further year’s respite from the labour of life as some highly placed educationists do in fact seem to regard it,” Dr. Stead states, “then there will inevitably result an outcry against the cost involved. On the other hand I believe it is possible, by a rigid examination of the underlying principles of true education, so to revitalise our educational system as to make apparent to all the real advance that is possible.”