Hawke's Bay Herald. TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1880. CRAMMING CHILDREN.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5661, 13 April 1880, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1880. CRAMMING CHILDREN.

Mr Lee, the Wellington Inspector of Schools, has, aimed a well-timed blow at the present educational system of the I colony. In Ms last report he says that two mistakes have been made — one "in launching the w.hole scheme of the neu Colonial Standards at once, without giving time for the more gradual introduction of additional subjects, and another by including the additional subjects within the standards, instead of adopting the English plan of making provision for their being taught as extra and optional subjects." He further expresses the opinion that " without a very great expenditure of public money, and possibly not then, teachers will very seldom be found who arc competent to teach many of these subjects," and again, "if extra subjects are included in the standards they must form a part of the pass made by each pupil, and if they form a part of the pass, there is either the extreme difficulty of testing the knowledge of each pupil in each subject, or the manifest unfairness of giving pupils, who have no faculty for acquiring a knowledge of a given subjecb, the same consideration in marks as those who show a special faculty for it." This, as the New Zealand Times remarks, " amounts to an avowal of belief that if the standards now in vogue are to bo maintained in strict compliance with the regulations under the Education Act, either a new class of teachers must be obtained and a new plan of rapidly imparting instruction devised, or teachers aud pupils must " cram " for results, and the inspectors bo compelled to generalise their reports in order to gloss over the defects of pupils who, put to the test, have not the aptitude to acquire knowledge in school lore beyond the limits of elementary in-

struction. The last result must necessarily follow as a soqxienco to the rest so long as the increment of teachers' salaries is made dependent on the number of passes annually accomplished Under the standards." We cordially endorse the condemnation of the system by Mr Lee. It is a simple impossibility to thoroughly " ground " children in the multitudinous subjects now tattght in our public schools, and cramming for examinations has become the all but universal rule-. This word "cramming" is an admirable means of expressing the process .of preparation. If a boy or girl—or a man or woman for that matter—bo crammed with highly-seasoned food, cue meal being thrust down befofe the last has had time to l»o digested, the result is a certain amount of unhealthy ilabbiness added to the bulk of the body, at the expense of all the animal functions. It is just so with intellectual "cramming." One subject after another is taken up and hastily thrust into the already overloaded cranium of a youngster, but the result, though for tlie time it may appear satisfactory, is in the end disastrous. There is no time allowed for the digestion of the mental food dealt out in such excessive quantities, and the brain merely becomes a sort of storehouse of miscellaneous odds and ends, and loses the power of searching aiid investigating which is so necessary, if tlie child is to become a thinking man and- a useful citizen. When released from school control a violent reaction sets in, and very few and far between are the instances in which a youth pursues those studies to lay the foundations of which has taken so many years of his school-boy life. And the evil docs not end here. If the result were merely that the brain rejected the unnecessary food no great harm would bo done. But time is wasted and the energies weakened, and the really essential subjects —the "three r's " which hounded our father's ambition —are neglected in consequence. At tlie:\3nct ftf seven years, which may be taken as the average seilobi-iife of a boy attending our public schools, he 'knows enough of music to " make night hideous," enough of chemistry to k'edp his parents in perpetual fear lest he should, blow-up the house and all its contents with some bright experiment, and enough of various other semi-scientific matters to enable him to make constant blunders and to contradict those who know better* His knowledge of suck subjects as are reAlly likely to be of use" Id liiui in the calling of a mechanic or clerk is equally limited, while, if all his time had been devoted to them instead of being frittefed-aWay in obtaining smatterings of various "isms" and "ologies" of no earthly use to him, he might have been really well grounded in tlid more elementary and useful arts. The system which is bad for the boy is equally bad for the teacher, and we hope that other Inspectors, besides Mr Lee, will take up the subject and impress upon the Education Department tlie folly of insisting upon so many subjects being taught in primary schools.