EDUCATION METHODS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 109, 8 April 1926, Page 7

EDUCATION METHODS.

INQUIRY IN AMERICA. VIEWS OF "AUSTRALIAN. LONDON, April 7. Mr Stanton Sharman, educationist, winner of the Victorian Government’s travelling scholarship, has completed his investigations in America on the subject of education. He says that America and England take entirely opposite views of sex education. America regards it as a subject the schools must teach, whereas England does not touch it, chiefly for the reason that English homes and churches still powerfully influence the children. Those influences are apparently losing ground in America, with the result that the schools feel that they are responsible for teaching it. Mr Sharman expresses the opinion that in the hands of the right type of teachers little harm is likely to result, but it is not what is taugnt, but the tone of the school which counts.

Commenting on the efforts of Professor Cyril Burt, psychologist to the London County Council’s Education Department, to devise a method of finding the vocation for which a pupil is best suited, Mr Sharman isays tho linal judgment must still rest with tho parent. v Regarding the Dalton method of individual time-tables, the object of which is that quicker pupils shall not lie held back by slower, Mr Sharman thinks that there is better promise in the Howard plan of combining teaching with the idea of individual effort. Mr Sharman regrets that Victoria’s lack of sympathy with the training of teachers at the University and High Schools prevented that State retaining its lead over other Universities. Ho found that this branch of work was making headway in America, England and Scotland.—A. and N.Z. cable.