MESSAGE TO TEACHERS

Evening Star, Issue 21724, 19 May 1934, Page 11

MESSAGE TO TEACHERS

SHOULD DEVELOP WIDER VISION INTERESTING REFLECTIONS BY MISS MAGILL The necessity for school teachers to associate with organisations outside the realm of school life in order that they would be able to interpret tilings that were going on around them to-day was stressed by Miss M. Magill in . the course of an address, entitled ‘The Musings of an Immediate Past President,’ to the annual meeting of the Otago branch of the New Zealand Educational yesterday. Miss Magill said that in her presidential address to thij conference of the New Zealand Educational Institute entitled ‘ Education: The Hope of the World,’ she had endeavoured to show the importance of the right conditions in schools to allow of the full development in the children of the powers of planning, organising, voluntary subordination, responsible leadership, etc. —powers so necessary in the world in which they would function as adults. She had not dwelt on the conditions necessary, and she would not do so now, except to say that they must be such as to allow a child to be fully known to the teacher so that the tools in use shall not be obsolete, but such that the stimulation inside the school should be able to compete with the competition and the stimulation outside.

She would say that when it was realised that a country’s greatest resources were its people and their welfare and development these conditions would bo brought about. But of the teachers and their part she wished to say much more.

It was her considered opinion that next to the children teachers were the most important people in the world to-day, and were carrying the heaviest responsibility. It was because of that that she wanted to develop her theme, and give them, among other things,' a little of what Dr Ballard called “ medicine.”

The questions she wanted to ask were :

Is there too much organisation in our schools ?

Does the grading list loom too large in our planning of work ? Is there a stifling of the spirit by a pre-occupa-tion with material success? —Perhaps not in Otago, she remarked amidst laughter. Are you an artist in education or are you (to quote someone, I know not whom) “ Dull, uninspired, travelling with flat-footed thoroughness the dirty floor of education?” Is education to you a programme of living—a training in self-government, self-control, and self-expression —or does prejudice stand in the way of your adjustment to these ideas? Do you believe that the need for research in education is as necessary as the need for research in .medicine?

Do you tend to over-estimate and

over-stimulate the merely intellectual aspects of education, so that those who ought to be the leaders of the next generation do, not develop the qualities of leadership ? . Do you think that for a child it is better to live a full life than to have run educational races? _ , Do you think that the qualities the world needs for human' progress are courage, gaiety, truth, vitality, and health ?

Do you believe that in the new world there should be more chance-of happiness for the commpn crowd and a wider horizon for the average mind ? Do you think you guard sufficiently against becoming “ a man among children, a child among men?” Miss Magill went on to deal with some interesting reflections : of Dr Willi Schopaus, director of a Swiss training college for problem children, in his. book, entitled ‘ The Dark Places of Education,’ which contained seventyeight reports of school _ experiences which were particularly significant to teachers. Miss Magill concluded by strongly urging .teachers to develop interests outside the schoolroom, and she was accorded a hearty vote of thanks for her address.