ADVICE TO TEACHERS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 188, 8 May 1934, Page 11

ADVICE TO TEACHERS

Democratic Organisations CRITICISM NOT PRAISE Professor Hunter’s Views Believing, as he said, that to-day there was more need of criticism than praise, Professor T. A. Hunter, ViceChancellor of the University of New Zealand, devoted his address to tlie New Zealand Educational Institutes conference yesterday chieflj’ to the dangers that lay in democratic organisations in general and teachers’ institutions in particular. There was a tendency in modern democratic institutions, be said, toward tlie counting of heads, a tendency to pay respect to the payer of dues. But there was the very serious danger of the tail of numbers wagging the head of ability. The need of finance, the fear of competing organisations, and the popular election of officers were among the influences at work in that direction. Thus democratic institutions tended to mediocrity. Tlie attitude to be developed was that people must qualify in order to become members. What was wanted was the old standard of the mediaeval guilds. He suggested that a member of the institution could not claim to be supported merely because he had paid his subscription. He needed also a just case. “The Word Killeth.” There was a real danger, Professor Hunter said, in the setting up of professional codes. “The word killeth: it is the spirit that keepeth. alive,” he said. It was futile to think that people could be kept right by regulation. Another danger behoved that teachers should above all be cautious or the Influences of habit and regression. If teachers mixed only with teachers then they would find a gradual development of a stereotyped pattern. “I say quite seriously,” continued Professor Hunter, “teachers should not spend their holidays with other teachers. Let them develop other interests in life, in sport, in hobbies, in art, in public life. That is the danger, for instance, in summer schools. We may take our profession so seriously that we forget what the job is for. There is a tendency for us teachers especially, who are dealing with immature minds, to get back to immaturity in our own minds.” Restricting Education. There was a modern tendency to restrict education to that which would profit people' in the earning of their livelihood.' AU educationists had tQ fight'this idea.'He did not deny that education should fit a man to earn his living bJ’ methods that were socially good, but to make this the measuring rod was fatal both to education and. to life. People were not here in the world to earn a living, Surely they were earning a living so that they might live! He was •;perfectly satisfied, be said, that nd real solution of the econ r omic problem would‘come until there was a reduction in the period of time during which it was necessary to earn a living/ ' Then, of course, came the problem bf educating people to use the leisure gained and. the question of expenditure,'. Quoting R. H. Tawney, he said a nation whose income was barely sufficient to maintain its population might plausibly argue that it must live from hand to mouth, and had no surplus to spend on the special cultivation of the power of the rising generation. A nation which could spend millions of pounds on armaments, drink and so on might prefer not to attend to the' welfare of its children, but it was estopped from arguing that it could not afford to do so.