SCHOOL VALUATIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 108, 10 May 1933, Page 11

SCHOOL VALUATIONS

PEDANTIC AND NARROW

; EXAMINATION FETISH

"Our conventional school standards are far too narrow: the old examination criteria are rapidly beinj displaced by broader educational valuations," declared Mr. F. Milner, Waitaki, in the course of his presidential address yesterday to the Secondary Schools' Association. "The new philosophy 'of education," he went on to say, "has for its objects the development of the whole humanity of its pupils. We pay lip service to the dominant spiritual aspects of our life work, while concentrating far too exclusively on intellectual development. Surprise is often expressed by men of affairs in later life that predictions of brilliant success based on school performances are so often nullified by failures. The reason of this common experience' is obvious. The traditional school valuations are pedantic and narrow. The ■faculty of assimilating knowledge, of memorising, and of gramophonic reproduction is over-estimated to the neglect of such factors as tact, tenacity, popularity, address, and personality. In after-life these, as well as the physical, endowment of health, completely outweigh the purely intellectual faculty of receptivity. Unfortunately, the altogether undue prominence attached to scholarship and matriculation results not only gives the public wrong valuations of education, but by its publicity encourages far too many teachers to specialise on examinational objectives, to tho neglect of broader and more vital aspects of education. INCREASING RESPONSIBILITIES. "Secondly, in tliis thrilling and kaleidoscopic ago- of post-war reconstruction and scientific development education has' to face over-increasing responsibilities. Abovo everything, we need to educate for elasticity and adaptability of mind, for charity of spirit, and for general resourcefulness. The gospel iof the fearsome term,' 'technocracy,' merely emphasises our educational responsibilities to the coming age of leisure. Already the marvellous developments of this, technological age are realising Maeterlinck's predictions. Years ago he warned us that 'the bulk of mankind-will know days when labour will become less incessant, exhausting, less material, tyrannical, pitiless. What will humanity make of this leisure? On its employment may be said to depend the whole destiny of man. It is the way in which hours of freedom are spent that determines, as much as war or as labour, the moral worth of a.nation. It raises or exalts, it .replenishes or exhausts. '* * . / "In England Dr. Ernest Barker and Principal Jacks maintain,that leisure is greater than work, because it is .the growing time of the spirit, and therefore life should be organised as'much for leisure, as for work. Education, therefore,"if rightly interpreted, must provide training for -a-, right, way of utilising, leisure which otherwise will bo wasted or perverted. . In an age instinct with revolt and rebellion, education did not escape the challenge being thrown out. Thinking men in all progressive countries were turning with tenew^ed faith to education—to counter the mechanistic interpretation of life, to save democracy by intelligent citizenship, and to raise the standard of life by, dignifying and exalting leisure. Science had now endowed man with such vast material power, with such illimitable command over the forces of nature, had invested him with such -lethal agencies that only education with its reinforcement ;of moral values' and spiritual ideals," and its wider sanity of outlook could counteract a racial catastrophe. IMPORTANCE OP '' SCHOOL POWER.',' "School power," continued Mr. Milnerj "is more important for the /British Empire than sea power. But such education , must envisage broad objectives and show its fruition in the standard of our citizenship. Not that I would decry New Zealand secondary education on'the wholes It surpasses that of Canada in its collegiate spirit, in its utilisation of games and its range of inter-curricular interests. It surpasses the United States in standar3 of scholarship and cultural ideals, but not in range of curriculum. , It is superior to- English secondary education in ita democratic equality of opportunity, and in its avoidance'of social stratification. But it should ask for a spiritual process, a truer valuation than a wretched external examination test. "A pathetic feature of modern civi-, lisation is the intellectual pauperisation of the multitude. Millions are destitute of those resources o£-the mind and spirit which alone can drape the Stark actualities of life, irradiate leisure, and emancipate from tho monotony of daily toil. Surely in our schools as beneficiaries of a great spiritual heritage devolves the responsibility of adequate interpretation of this endowment of the young through speech, literature, music, and all forms of art in which the genius and soul of man have found expression. Education must give the keys of this treasure house to" the young, stimulate their higher interests, and endow them with indefeasible resources for their p-\yn enrichment and for elevating tho standards of public taste.", -