THE NEW SYLLABUS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 151, 30 June 1928, Page 10

THE NEW SYLLABUS

views of educational; . institute '"MORE FREEDOM FOR THE TEACHER" The executive of the New Zealand Educational Institute" has placed ou record, the following expression of opinion regarding the new syllabus:— The committee considers that increased freedom for the teacher as regards selection of matter and teaching methods is the most important issue arising out of the new syllabus. Teaching is not a mechanical process. It is a vital one dependent upon the interaction of personalities; "An Impinging of Life on Life." The /teacher's personality as the controlling factor must be given very wide discretion to adjust itself to the problems arising' out of the direction of the educational process. An) tendency of prescriptions toward hard and fast standardisation of aims and methods must check and defeat what is fundamentally an inspirational process seizing and developing cues as they arise out of a given conjuncture in the instruction. • . • ■ The essential safeguard ; o£ our educational system is not a scope to which its servants are restricted by regulations, but a service' so selected and trained that it is qualified while broadly adhering to the spirit and intention of the national system to exercise a very great degree of personal initiative. . ■ The,teaching, service 23 years ago when Mr. Hogben's syllabus was promulgated was not in general qualified for self-determination. It did not desire it. To-day a better selected, better trained, better educated profession us so qualified, and puts such self-deter-mination first among the reforms it urges., • . ; While welcoming indications in thf advance copy of the new syllabus that this concession of increased freedom to teachers is much in the iriind of the Department, this committee of the institute points to the existing system of inspection as needing searching investi* gation and drastic alteration if the freedom vital to true scholastic progress it to be secured. At present it feels that the general tendency is to make originality and enterprise run the gauntlet and to bestow rewards upon results of a kind conventionally approved. - .It argues that the opposite should be the case if the spirit of experiment so often asked for by the Director is to become really manifest. It therefore respectfully requests the Department to confer With the institute re the inspection system as it has existed in the past. . ... .■ '.- The executive endorses the opinion expressed in the prefatory note to the "English Handbook of Suggestions for Teachers": —"The only uniformity of practice desired in the teaching of the elementary schools is that each teacher shall think for himself and !work out for himself such methods of teaching as may use his powers to the best advantage and be best suited to tho particular needs and conditions of,the. school."