EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 13949, 4 January 1906, Page 10

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE.

ANNUAL CONFERENCE. [Per Press- Association'.] INVERCARGILL, January 3. The Now Zealand Educational Institute met in annual conference her© today. After the delegates had been we I corned to the town by the Mayor, 3/1 c Seandrett, and others, the president of the Institute, Mr T. H. Gill (Wellington) thanked those who had spoken for their cordial welcome. The climate was amply compensated for by the warmth of the welcome they had received. Ho expressed thanks to the Institute for electing him president, this being his first opportunity of doing so, as he was not present when elected. Regarding the work of the Institute he spoke eloquently of the hard burden borne by those who had grown old in the service. ■A section of members thought that the Institute should be conducted more on the lines of a trades union, but to this he strongly objected, not so much because they were a profession and not a trade, but because organisation, which tended to cultivate selfish interests only, was, in his view, of ephemeral value. The Department, Boards, committees, inspectors and teachers must all be subordinated to the well being of the children. The attitude they took up and the arguments they advanced might not commend themselves to the body of the people or even the more thoughtful, but it was only by strenuously insisting on the reforms they desired and supporting them by all the reasons they could adduce that they would succeed. Their position, too, was all the stronger when the object they had in view was the improvement of the education system, and not their own advancement. He mentioned reforms that had been brought about and which the Institute had advocated strongly, though he did not claim that they were entirely duo to their efforts. Far was it from him to belittle the work of the Department _ which had accomplished wonders in co-ordinating primary, secondary and technical education, and in producing a syllabus generally conceded to bo a distinct advance on its predecessors. There was a great deal more to do. A reform which was pressing was that the pupil teacher system should be abolished. It did not go far enough. Ho proposed to add that the average number of children to every certificated teacher should bo forty-five. He spoke highly of the new syllabus, which endeavoured to lead children along the path which Nature had indicated, the path of patient observation and experiment. The accurate setting out cf tacts observed or experimented with, and the construction of theories to account for facts made demands on pupil teachers which were unreasonable, and also on assistant teachers, who were expected to teach, on an average, sixty pupils. The pupil teacher system was quite out of keeping with the steady advance of educational progress. In America it was • recognised that a teacher should not be called upon to have larger classes than thirty or forty. He did not say that teachers could not teach and discipline larger classes, but unhesitatingly affirmed that where teachers were quite unable to come into close personal contact with each child, and use the means best calculated to develop the latent powers of each child, there must bo absence of intelligent effort to draw out the possibilities of the children. Although a large number of pupil teachers had passed the matriculation examination at the commencement of thencareers, they were unfit to have charge of classes. they wex’e ignorant of the

fundamental principles on which sound methods were based, while they were quite unable to appreciate the problem of training the intellectual and emotional life of children. Tho greater problem of character building, tho true aim of education, was a terra incognita to them. The most important years cl a child’s life were those when his education should bo entrusted to the most skilful teachers it was possible to procure, and there was no justification, save false economy, for, handing over education to untrained boys and girls. Alany pupil teachers had done good work, and many headmasters had produced highly satisfactory results from an examination point of view, but would not a very much clearer insight into the problem of education have been reached if the teaching had been solely in the hands of trained men and women? The conclusions to be drawn from the new syllabus were the necessity for intelligent, purposeful teaching, anH classes of not more than forty-five, so that the cultivation of the spirit of inquiry or rather the fostering of that spirit might be assisted in every legitimate way. Tho conference passed a resolution to tho effect that the pupil teacher system should bo abolished. The following remits' were adopted : Wanganui.—That the Department bo asked to frame a regulation that head teachers should hold promotion examinations at tho end of the calendar year. Otago.—That the Institute again urge the necessity, for commercial education for the colony. Wanganui.—That the inspectorate be centralised. ■

North Canterbury.—That instructions defining the syllabus be issued to inspectors.