SECONDARY EDUCATION

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 54, 6 March 1922, Page 2

SECONDARY EDUCATION

THE DALTON PLAN.

The Dalton Plan is an educational re-,' form which does not cost any money (writes a correspondent). It is a reform in method. It has been recently introduced into Borne secondary schools in England, and it has not as vet met a breath of hostile criticism. This seems to indicate that there is a recognition that school procedure needs revising. Miss Helen Parkhurst introduced the method into England, and it gets its -name from the town in which it was originally tried—Dalton. The~ plan threatens some of the simple plans teachers know so well. For one thing, it abolishes the time-tabltf—psychologic-ally unsound—being framed more for the convenience of the administrators than in the interests of the children. Again, a writer in the Educational Supplement of The Times mentions that this method may lead to a- modification of ideas about the evils of large classes. Here, in brief, is a description of " The Dalton Plan." Each pupil is given on entering a school at the beginning of the term a card containing one month's assignment of work in all the academic subjects included in the curriculum; but, instead of. being regulated by a time-table and gone through in class in thY ordinary way, this work was done by the^pupils at a time and in an order arranged by themselves. Each teacher sat as a specialist in a loom labelled according to subject— history, geography, Latin, etc.—and the children were free to decide for themselves into which "laboratory" they would go when they entered school- in the morning^ and the length of time they should stay in the room devoted to that subject they ,had decided to work at first. The progress of each child is each day indicated by a small series-of charts on the wall of the room. Methods of a teacher have as much influence as the subject taught. Some people say they have none. It is claimed for the Dalton Plan that it develops a capacity for responsibility that present methods do not develop. It delivers the young person from spoon-feed-ing and throws her on her own resources. If the Dalton Plan does this it will Lave achieved a great deal. Present methods are often along- spoon-feeding lines, and people who have been spoon-fed by a teacher all the days of their youth expect to be spoon-fed by a Government all the days of their life. Is this the secret of New Zealand's leaning towards bureaucracy? t Certainly, if the method will create citizens of a more -responsible type ib is worth trying. There are glowing accounts from some English schools of its "success. Has it been tried in New Zealand secondary school*, arid is New Zealand still able to givfe "points" to I the world on affairs educational? . ..