EDUCATION

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 131, 7 June 1927, Page 9

EDUCATION

THE MODERN AIM

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

DANGER OF MERE THEORY

. (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 23rd April. Two conferences of the teaching pro- .. fession wero held at Easter, and both ■ furnished striking addresses from the ; presidential chairs. At the annual conference of the Na- ■ tional Union of Teachers at Margate the president, Mr. F. Mander (Luton) said that in spite o£ all that had been . clone for education in the post-war ' years, the system tvas still far from what it should be, or what it soon could be, if it were more generally rea- • lised that the schools ought to exist s for a practical nation, and not for. a theoretical department. Tradition, like iire, was a good servant, but a bad master, and the arch-tradition, uniformity, was "an unconscionable time in dying.'' "A sound educational system,"' Mr. Mander proceeded, "must found itself on 'realities, and not on abstractions; ■ and the facts of life most vividly ob- ; vious to the practical educator are va- , riety, differentiation, and inequality. Children are not born equal, nor can 1; they be made equal. The wayward, and oft-times seemingly cruel discrimination of Nature cannot be over-filled. Neither can social inequalities ever be completely eradicated. Yet, in the fact of this, teachers have called insistently for equality of opportunity for the children. 'What is it that they really mean? To help to supply the answer to this question I venture to lay down a single principle, which . must underlie any sound system of education. It is this: that the course of studies and training laid down for each . stage should be in harmony with, and . adapted. to, the natural development o±' the individual child's mind and body. If this principle be accepted—and I think it will not be questioned by. any reflective mmd —it means that when . the State assumes responsibility for education, it must bring to bear upon the child a '.vise discrimination; the State must differentiate on grounds of the suitability of the proposed instruction to the natural development and potentialities of the child. 'Wherein then, lies the claim for equality of opportun- j ity? Certainly not in a demand for similar for every child; but in a claim that the State has np right to discriminate in its gifts to children ;of similar bodily and mental fitness; and that a child's right to education of • this, or that, kind—so long as it is ■ provided by the State—shall stand or fall on its own ability to learn, and on no other ground, such as its parent's ability to earn." SOUND BUSINESS. The observance of such a principle, Mr. Mander continued, was not only fair to the child, but it was sound business for the State. Teachers had for long claimed that during. adolescence there must be variety and differentiation' both in opportunities and treatment, and, above all, a new largeness of outlook in the schools. Life embraced leisure and learning, but it also embraced industry and .earning, and the two ideas ought to bo regarded as complementary and not opposed. Inability to earn almost invariably destroyed aspiration and the desire to learn. Ho felt that it.must become increasingly the function of the schools to aim at producing in the child the interest, faculty, power, and adaptability which would enable it to livo a full life ■within a nation, which not only i'unctioned as a social and civic unit, but also as a commercial and industrial com■munity. Mr. R. Anderson (New- Cross), president of the National Association of Schoolmasters, speaking at Bristol, ufc•terctl a warning against the lack of 'discipline which of recent years had i .manifested itself in the schools. While it was a matter for satisfaction that boys and girls no longer regarded the 'teacher as a person whose chief function was to interfere with their yiersonal liberty, he thought there was a danger in running to the other extreme.' Was not the gospel of free development of the individual boing rather overdone, he asked,, and was there no evidence of too little discipline both inside and outside the school 1 Education was intended to prepare the child for life, and if school was regarded as a training ground for the sterner battle which followed the child should surely be taught to meet and overcome difficulties, to do things he did not want to do, to learn to take the rough with the smooth, and to learn the habit of selfdiscipline. It was wrong to make things too easy or too pleasant, and continually to sweep difficulties out of the path. (Hear, hear.) "STUNT-MONGERS." "'Our schools," he continued, "seem to afford a convenient experimenting ground for all sorts of "stunt-mong-ers," who, provided they have an opportunity" of testing their pet theories, seem to concern themselves very little with the question whether the work of education is such as to make our scholars equal to the exacting demands made upon them- by this work-a-day world. As a profession we often give these people far too mnch rope, and then we are apt to grumble because people complain that the work is not being done. If things are to improve wo must sot ourselves to turn the stuntmerchants right-about and make our own contribution to the problem more effectively and more, obtrusively. ■ 'As educationists, we must banish from our minds the irrelevancies of class distinction. We must avoid picturing our system of schools as consisting of a number of separate self-con-tained types with most inappropriate names; elementary, secondary, higher grade, central, public, and -so on, having little or no vital relationship one to another, and corresponding not to successive stages in a unified system, not to the educational attainments of the pupils for which they cater, but rather to the social standing or financial condition of the parents of the scholars." ■ 85, Fleet street.