TRENDS IN ENGLAND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 199, 23 July 1937, Page 6

TRENDS IN ENGLAND.

EDUCATION METHODS. WELLINGTON, July 22. “In the last 20 years, the chief movement in English education has been toward ordered freedom,” said Mr G. T. Hankin, representative of the English Board of Education, in a New Education Fellowship Conference address at the Wellington Technical College Hall to-night on “Educational Trends in England.” One of the problems had been, the lecturer said, to reduce the educational system to order. They had com'e to look upon education as a continuous process, and they had done their best to get the system ordered right through from the intant to the secondary school. The great difficulty had been to effect the right transfer from the one school to the other. The question of homework had caused a lot of excitement in England lately, and the board had suggested that the amount of homework given to children of various ages should be very carefully regulated. This excitement had been due to two causes, first health, and, secondly, opportunity for leisure and social life. “We believe in approaching the problem of speech and language from the point of view of speech and language; therefore we teach our grammer very largelv incidentally,” Mr Ha.nkin said, on the subject of the formal English grammar lesson. The analytical approach was, he hoped, disappearing. The approach was from the real, living 6poken language. . Another feature of the trends in England had been the enormous increase in the importance placed on art and music and the aesthetic side of life.