The Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 23, 1937. THE EDUCATION CONFERENCE.

Evening Star, Issue 22708, 23 July 1937, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 23, 1937. THE EDUCATION CONFERENCE.

It will not be surprising if some teachers who have attended all the sessions of the Education Conference that has just concluded in this city, after repeated sensations of reinvigoration and new life, feel a little dazed by the variety and volume of all the mental stimulus that has been showered upon them. The public who have read the reports of addresses delivered not only in Dunedin, but elsewhere throughout New Zealand, may be expected to have shared those feelings in a different proportion. The questions discussed being less familiar to their minds, they will have more reason for being incapacitated for immediate judgment by so much new wine. But everyone will. get some ideas for himself, or have previous ideas confirmed, from the spate of counsel and instruction that has been flowing, and the assurance that the conferences will leave New Zealand teachers with a new appreciation of their responsibilities and the aims of their profession is one that leaves no shadow of doubt. The personality of the visitors has had perhaps the strongest influence on those who have heard them speak. Members of the New Education Fellowship do not all hold the same views in detail, which would be impossible, but they stand for a common tendency, meant to give education the largest worth for the greatest number of people all the time. They do not despise the old, but they would improve on it. Above all they would make education alive. A good number of their ideas have not been new to New Zealand; here and there beginnings have been made with their application ; it has been new and exhilarating, however, to hear them presented with such freshness and force. Immediate concrete results—such as effects on the new Education Bill to be brought down next session—may be considerable or small. They are. not what most matters. Intangible results, in a new vision for teachers and new inspiration, should be strong and abiding. Finance must be a factor in the structural organisation of education. Professor Kandel has explained how the curriculum in the United States has gone on expanding until recently there were 302 different courses included in it. Something li lr o that would appear to bo necessary to provide all the variety that is desirable to serve different bents and aptitudes, but such lavishness is not practicable for &ew Zealand. Fortunately it is laid down that “as is the teacher, so is the school.” By a right choice and preparation of teachers much

may be done to make education what it should be. It has been well said that “ mere mental training is not sufficient.” Education embraces the whole man. Methods have improved, despite conservatism. •At Eton eighty years ago English literature was not recognised as a subjee' It was seriously argued that, with the possible exception of Shakespeare, no boys could bo interested in the English poets as they were in the Greek and Roman classics, and that the best way of studying Shakespeare was by translating him into Greek. At the same time boys were encouraged to read English literature, and it may be that for some of them the system was not very different from that which Dr Cyril Norwood has advocated for to-day in saying, with some that English as a subject should not be examined for pupils under sixteen or seventeen. “ Let the teacher treat poetry as the material to be used at pleasure and for pleasure.” “Education for itself” is a precept, laid down by Recktor Zilliacus, that (requires to be remembered, with the understanding always present that education for life is something different from education for a living. The worst service that is being done to education in New Zealand at present lies in inducements made for boys to take less, instead of more, of the best that is provided. ‘ There are fewer boys attending two Dunedin High Schools at this juncture than attended one five years ago. The deep sense of gratitude which the Otago Education Board, has expressed to the New Education Fellowship delegation will bo very generally endorsed.