SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 48, 25 August 1914, Page 9

SCHOOLS AND CHILDREN

A NEW ZEALANDER IN GERMANY. DISCIPLINE AND METHOD.

(FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 17th July. Miss F. Shearer, who is in the service of the Otago Education Board and has been on extended leave in Europe, has made good use of her opportunities of seeing how schools are conducted here. With her mother and sisters Miss Shearer made an extended and thorough tour of Germany, France, and Belgium, and then she settled down for, three months in Leipzig, where her sister, Miss W. B. Shearer, remains for her musical studios. In Leipzig Mjbs Shearer saw much of the German schools and she received much hospitality and assistance, from the German educational authorities in doing so. What strikes her most in the German schools, she says, is the method. In every department of work method is instilled into the children so that they are like little automata, doing everything with olock-like precision. The discipline of the schools is the discipline which permeates the whole of the German nation. It is very remarkable and very admirable, but Miss Shearer thinks it tends to destroy .the originality and resource of the child. German * school children begin their lessons very early in the day, generally at 8 o'clock, but they have a few hours off in the middle of the day to enable them to get a ri)Jhfc amount of fresn air, and then they reassemble for lessons. Since coming to England Miss Shearer has had opportunities 6f comparing the English system with the German. She makes no secret of the advantages of » the German system, but there are not wanting advantages in the system of the London County Council. Through the instrumentality of the High- Commissioner and of Sir Robert Blair (education ofticer to the London County Council) Mise Shearer was appointed to the unattached teaching staff afc a saJary of £90 a year, .and she had six months' very thorough experience of all sorts of schools in the County of London. What amazes her most is the very wide general knowledge which the London child acquires. "Little children are like old men," she says, "apd. their handwork- it marvellous;, I

would really like to keep them in school all the time, for their own sakes." For, as most people know, the London County Council is the foster father of a great many of London's children, doing everything for them that is of any use to them, feeding them, washing them, and teaching them. Although England does not know the rigid discipline of the German child there is one stylo in English schools that Miss Shearer likes very much. It is known as free discipline. That is to say, the child does what it feels like doing. If it wishes to draw it draws. If it feels like writing it writes. If it wants chalk it walks over and gets some. Miss Shearer says that so long as the teacher is a disciplinarian and keeps proper control this system is of great value. It makes school more pleasant for the child and it teaches him originality. Miss Shearer^ who is attached to the Green Island School, will probably be returning to New Zealand shortly. Miss Higgins, of Wellington, is also attached for experience to tho London County Council teaching staff.