A TEACHER ABROAD

Evening Star, Issue 21090, 30 April 1932, Page 10

A TEACHER ABROAD

ADDRESS TO INSTITUTE DR J. D. SALMOND'S EXPERIENCES The monthly meeting of the Dunedin sub-branch of the New Zealand Lclucational Institute was held last night, when the president (Miss L. Sullivan) was in the chair. Dr J. D. Salmond, director of vouth work of the Piesbjterian Church, who returned recently from a tour of the world, delivered an •address, his subject being ‘A Teacher Abroad.’ . . ~ , Dr Salmond said :—‘ I want to take you on a very rapid tour this evening through the education systems of America, Britain, Germany, Russia, and Denmark. First of all, I shall try to pass on to you a few general observations, taking each country mentioned above in turn. Then I shall discuss with you some reflections on the great modern realities which educators the world over are facing. “ 1. I was in America long enough to make a fairly careful study of all sections of education. The first thing one has to boar in mind is that it is quite impossible to generalise about American education. America has some of the finest educational institutions in the world and some of the worst. The aim of American education is to give free education to all, right up to the college level. In pursuance of this worthy ideal, educational institutions well equipped and efficiently controlled have come into being all over the country. Curricula have been revised to meet the needs of the masses of students who are seeking high school and college education. The zeal for education has expressed itself in great interest in the educational implications of sociology and psychology. In American schools one hears a great deal about mental tests, life situations, experiencing, child-centred curricula, social recitation, etc. Americans are intensely practical in their _ outlook, and this is reflected in their education. The sciences, physical , and social, have definitely displaced the classics, which are almost as dead as Julius Ciesar. , . While I was greatly impressed with many aspects of American education it had a number of defects. The teaching profession is not yet one of the socalled learned professions. Owing to the fact that tho great majority of the teacher# are women it has been described as ‘ a procession rather than a profession.’ My impression is that in tho high schools there is rather much mushy ‘-co-edism,’ which frequently leads to a lack of order and mental discipline. Then the 1 desicated ’ curriculum with its hosts of free electives and lack of continuity is responsible for an absence of standards and a general lack of thoroughness. American education, so far as its general philosophy is concerned, has been greatlv influenced during the past two decades by the Columbia School—Dewey, Kilpatrick, Thorndike, and others. They reflect the_ functional view of knowledge which is implicit in the whole national life—viz., that education much be good for something. This ideal is all right up to a point, but it tends to obscure the fact that tho high aim of our great endeavour as teachers is the nature of the human spirit, not just social efficiency. A SURPRISING FREEDOM. “ 2. In England the first thing which strikes a New_ Zealand student is the , lack of any rigidly controlled system of education. English education enjoys a freedom which is surprising, 1 and it exhibits a variety which is little short of astounding. Going as I did from American educational institutions to British, I was struck by tho contrast. Many Amerjcan educators regard education as a science, and seek , to work out a. standardised technique which can be employed with the precision of a machine. In England, on the contrary, emphasis is laid on education as an art, the personality of the teacher being of supreme importance. The English are right there. Contact with a personality possessed of a quiet, sane philosophy of life is infinitely more valuable than years of feverish energy directed by skilful technicians. In England educational jargo does not get much of a hearing. Self-expression, self-education, self-realisation are all kept in their right and proper place. Some advocates of self-expression in education are very simple. They forget that before it can really occur the living being must possess something worth expressing, and tliis is not obtained by aimless sensation-seeking or the constant stimulation of excitements. “ One feature of English schools which has its roots deep in the past, and which is a dominating force in the present, is tho ‘ community ’ tradition, which has been worked out most clearly in schools like Harrow, Eton, Rugby, and Charterhouse. The newer secondary schools, though they try with their curricula to meet modern needs, i

are aiming also to incorporate within themselves the best in the community tradition which was essentially the produtt of life conditions in a past ago. 1 also observed that the newer universities and the universities of Scotland are taking up the community idea as it can be expressed in residential colleges, tho college chapels, halls, common rooms, gardens, and tutors, being considered as essential to thorough university education as books, lectures, and examinations. English education is certainly seeking to adjust itself to the demands of the day, and in its community tradition has a sound educational'idea _ which other countries arc just beginning to adopt. GERMANY’S CHANGES. “ In no country (except perhaps Russia) have such radical changes taken place in education as in Germany. In 1914 education in Germany was under tho control of the Prussia Bureaucracy. State, church, and. university co-oper-ated in administering and organising the forms of education. Authority was highly centralised, and though German education was strictly efficient, a military rigidity made school life a restrictive period. It was the State machine for the creation of officers for the army, the Civil Service, and of public opinion. Now Germany is a republic. A reaction against the old military tradition, which does not disappear in a day, shows itself in a striving after individuality and an increasing respect for the personality of both pupil and teacher. Tho children of rich and poor sit together in tho same elementary schools. Experiments in community activities are being" made in schools. I recall in Berlin visiting a school where young people lived together in a co-operative community. So far ns I could observe, the relations, between boys and girls seemed to be natural and healthy. _ “ A great modern problem is just how can the knowledge imparted in the schools be brought into relation with the real needs of modern life. Iho Kerscliensteiner schools, with their workshops, are attempting to break up the old scholastic caste system and to show that a healthy community needs the energies of good workers in all spheres of lif#, and not only in the Civil Service and the professions. An effort is being made in the face of acute financial difficulties and chaotic industrial and political situations to extend facilities for workers’ education in the people’s and workers’ colleges. It is significant that after the war bankrupt Germany and Austria did not cut down expenditure on education. In Germany a rival is taking place in the social arts. The education the Germans can give in music, folk dancing, and drama in tho course of the elementary school period would put New Zealand to shame. German boys and girls love marching 1 and music, and I was frequently delighted by the sight of groups marching along to most varied music and singing. As I travelled about Germany I used to feel what an inartistic person I really was. The great world of culture had not been opened to me when I was a boy at the secondary school. My task then was to pass matriculation.

“ The Germans always have held in honour brilliant intellectual attainments. Fortunately that respect is still existing at a time when a strenuous endeavour is being made to broaden the school system and to make provision for an education which has as its foundations the broad basis of living culture. In German sfthools I used to imagine that early specialisation was an aim. I have learned that the Germans are far too astute for that. They aim first at general development in the early stages and then dispense their specialised knowledge in special schools —an example of German thoroughness. In my teaching experience in New Zealand I frequently felt that my teaching was suffering and tho sweep of ray thinking was being cramped by having constantly in view a restrictive examination syllabus, much of which I appreciated, some of which I thought must utterly .futile. The Germams partially got over this difficulty by having their school system sufficiently standardised. This enables entrance examinations to secondary and university institutions to be dispensed with. This tends in the higher stakes to give freedom to tho student because there is no doubt of what we call his “ grounding in the fundamentals.” “ German students travel a great deal. I met some students who had spent part of the university year’ in Berlin and Heidelberg, and intended to complete it in Bonn. If we had four residential college universities in New Zealand and a system of reciprocity in education with Australia a new means for true education would be available. ‘‘To sum up, the State frame still exists in Germany, but room is being made for the development of the individual. The appearance of the Work student, who brings a new contribution to German education, is also hastening on tho adaptation of the school system to the needs of a republic. I found in Germany some splendid methods and some particularly deep thinking on the philosophical basis of education, RUSSIA’S UPLIFT. ‘‘When some of my older friends hear that I spent over two weeks in

the U.S.S.R. they glance nervously at my pockets to see if any fuses happen to be showing, and then, seeing nothing, congratulate me on my escape. In no other country in tho world to-day is the power of education realised more than in the IJ.S.S.R. As an instrument for propaganda it is being used most effectively, but the Soviet leaders are alive to the more worthy aspects of education. By education they are trying to raise the cultural standard of about 160 millions of people, of whom 120 millions are peasants, and to create a completely new cultural atmosphere, which they desire to be radically different from the cultural atmospheres existing in other countries. Tho conception is stupendous, and even we in New Zealand cannot bo blind to tho implications of having in the world 160 millions of people inhabiting one-sixth of the world’s surface turning to a conception of culture foreign and antagonistic to our own. “ A great campaign for the liquidation of illiteracy is in progress. In 1920 statistics showed that 47 per cent, of the able-bodied population between the ages of fifteen and twenty did not know now to read and write. But the Soviet aim docs not end in abolishing illiteracy. The teaching of the 6 r’s is accompanied by a course in political and cultural education. To our eyes such education was propagandist and biased, but it is at least new to Russia.

“ The basic Soviet schools corresponding to our elementary schools in New Zealand is an amplified Labour school for both sexes. _ In the towns there are factory and industrial schools for preparing children _ for industrial work. In the country districts peasant youths arc given an ‘ agronomical ’ education. In these country schools artificial conditions are not created for demonstration purposes. The youngsters are actually sent to do ploughing, etc., on tho farms. Tho guiding principle in Soviet education seems to me to be_ a combining of theoretical and practical work, so that the pupils may imbibe tho principles and spirit of thb new Communist State. Social education is undertaken by organisations of Communist children, and a great feature is being made or the Komsomol —a movement of youth. The higher schools are directing their energies towards training a new staff of teachers and the creation of a new intelligentsia. The Institute of Red Professors in Moscow set itself specifically to prepare new Marxist teachers for the universities.

“ 1 was greatly impressed with tho way the Soviet administrators are seeking to educate the great masses of illiterate peasants and workers by use of the visual sense organ, the eye. Posters of all types are in great profusion, and the cinema, theatre, and radio are working overtime. One encounters on every hand displays of revolutionary realism. At the May Day celebrations in Moscow I witnessed thousand after thousand of men, women, and children marching across the Red square bearing banners describing the Five-year Plan and the progress of the revolution. Tho Statecontrolled printing presses are pouring out printed materials for the political education of the masses. In several factories I visited the well-known ‘ Red Corner,’ with its bust of Lenin and its table of cheap revolutionary literature, which is distributed free to the workers. Physical education is receiving a great deal of attention. While there is an intense hatred of individualism in the form of record-breaking and the idea of sport as an end in itself, there is developing a widespread desire to participate in team games. Tho purpose of sport is declared to be the training of young people in the spirit of co-operation. One feature of education in U.S.S.R. that impressed mo was the apparent eagerness to learn educational methods and techniques from abroad and to endeavour to experiment with them in the schools. Russia has always been a land of paradoxes and contradictions, and in no other department of Russian life are there so many paradoxes as in Russian education. QUALITY THAT COUNTS. “ Denmark is a little country which proves to the world that it is the quality and not the quantity of a people that really matters. New Zealand, particularly, could learn a great deal from Danish methods in primary production as well as in education. In Denmark there exists a sytem of small freohokling which has caused the balance of the population between urban and rural districts to be a satisfactory one. The wealth of the country is fairly well distributed so that neither millionaires nor paupers exist. Most of the farmers have good libraries, and not only know their jobs, but know how to co-operate in the pursuit of a common rural culture. The enlightened methods of production and the general high standard of culture the Danes attribute to their ‘ folk ’ high schools. These found their origin in the mind of a great pastor, Grundtvig, who had visions of an enlightened free and happy people at a time when Denmark had sunk to depths of misery. The folk high schools demand no entrance qualification except that the person be eighteen years of age and be willing to live* at school in a community for several months. Men find

it convenient to go in the oft seasons, winter, while girls frequently go during the summer months. The life _is spent in a free assimilation of Danish culture. Theatres are very popular and the people are able to appreciate good music. In Denmark there arc more theatres than picture shows. The spirit in which the teaching is carried on in tlvo folk schools, the subjects of study and the frequent communal activities in the home atmosphere of the school during the time in residence make it easy for the very evident cooperation which takes place in the production, collection, and distribution and sale of primary products. The Danes seem to have accomplished what wo have not yet done—the bridging of the gulf between cultural and vocational education. 1 was told that most Danish farmers every two years go with their families to visit the art galleries and museums of Copenhagen. This fact is an interesting commentary on the cultural standards of the people. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. “Now for a few reflections. In seeking to understand tire world in which the mission of education has to be fulfilled, I am convinced that we must start from the necessity of thinking in the terms of a world society. With amazing rapidity the chief characteristics of Western civilisation have come to dominate the whole world. And the driving forces of Western civilisation which are producing revolutionary changes in the outlook_ and life of all peoples are modern science, _ technical invention, and the organisation of life for economic ends. Tjie new education, based on science and economies, is shattering the old institutions and challenging the old religions. The result is that multitudes of human beings are being thrown together as unrelated atoms, without loyalties, without acknowledged standards of conduct, and without convictions regarding the meaning of life. “ Professor Paul Tillich, of Frankfurt, in a brilliant study of the present situation, linds the root cause of the evils and failures of modern society in the fact that it is a society which has come to rest in itself and has lost connection with the Eternal. It has 'become self-sufficient. This selfsufficiency expresses itself in all sorts of ways. Economic activity has as its end the provision of the largest possible quantity of goods for the largest number, and never pauses to ask the meaning of the process which claims all the energies of body and mind. “ The whole modern movement is an assertion of man’s independence. It rejected any external authority and sought to discover the meaning of life and the principles of human conduct from the study of man himself. Hence ui education the dominant ideal has been the growth of the free personality —a definitely humanistic ideal. “ Friedrich Gogarten, a great German teacher, declares that the colossal mistake of modern thought lies in the attempt to understand social institutions from the standpoint of the individual seeking his freedom and endeavouring to realise the fullness of his inner nature. The truth is that the reality of human life is never the reality of the private man. If we start from the free individual we can never reach a true social order. “The modern view that man is the measure of all things is being challenged in several quarters. Psychoanalysis is showing us that man is the plaything of varied powerful and largely unknown forces; modern physics is giving us new conceptions of matter and is reaching after a divine purpose in the universe. Some modern economists are rebelling against an economic system which depersonalises groat masses of men and leaves no place for common purpose and human fellowship. “ Education must take account of the new insights, which are revolutionising our thinking, and in time, perhaps in a very short time, will revolutionise our education. The great need in our day is for profound thought about the very basis of our education. The New Zealand Syllabus of Instruction says : —‘ Character training . . . is the principal function the State calls upon the teacher to perform.’ This raises the question, ‘AVhat kind of diameter should the trained and educated citizen have?’ This brings us to a more fundamental question, ‘On what is character in the last analysis built? ’ The answer to this involves one’s understanding of existence, one’s basic beliefs, one’s practical philosophy of life, one’s real religion. Belief is the sap which creates the tree of life, with all its branches, big and little. And if it is belief that gives life its form, then the problem of the right understanding of existence, of true belief, is the supreme problem for every era and for education. An age which has lost all beliefs about the meaning of life has lost everything. It must perish; it has no vitality to stand the strain of a crisis period. It seems to mo that the great task of education to-day is to face the facts of the modern world and so to mould the characters of the children of to-day that they may be able to bring into being the more splendid society of which prophets and reformers have dreamed all down the ages.” At the conclusion of his address. Dr Salmond was accorded a hearty vote of thanks.