INJURIOUS TEACHING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10125, 7 May 1896, Page 4

INJURIOUS TEACHING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

In New York lately there has been a ! change in respect to the teaching of , some subjects in the public schools, and - investigations made into the effects appear to show that these changes have not been beneficial. In New York, as in New Zealand, there has been a tendency to multiply the subjects taught in the schools. Some of the teachers have been questioned in respect to this, and they complain that year after year something has been taken away from the parents and imposed upon the school department. This, it is said, weakens the family ties, and has a tendency to lessen the respect of the hildran for their parents. This is a eery serious subject for consideration. There has been a general cry that at the schools children should be taught cooking, household economy, sewing, knitting, etc,, but the good effected in that way will certainly have its drawbacks if the system has a tendency to weaken parental authority and the family ties. The universal complaint in these colonies is that children are getting out of the control of their parents at an age when they cannot exercise any control over themselves, and it is a very grave consideration if it is found that the tendency is increased by the manner in which the State is assuming the duties and tasks which oueht to fall upon the parents. The tendency now is to cast everything upon "the State," and it is not uncommon to hear a mother grumbling if her daughters are not taught sewing and cooking in the school. It is affirmed by the teachers in New York that " no school can teach sewing and cooking like the mother in the home." Cooking in the schools, they say, is child's play, and expensive play at that. It seems to us that a school is wanted to teaeh parents, and especially mothers, their duties; and if the Women's Leagues, whose name is now legion among us, would devote their attention to this, and would leave politics alone till they knew mote than they do at present, they would be more beneficial to society thai) they are. The school may have a serious influence in sapping the authority of the parents, and it is a question whether this is not an evil Which has increased, which is increasing, and which ought to be diminished. The school cannot supersede thb home, but it may greatly weaken home influences and home teaching, On another subject we may learn something from what is , taking place in the education system , of New York. Lately a new law or regulation has been made as to the teaching of temperance and the effects of alcohol. Extreme rules are laid down, '( and the books, It seems, go the whole ! I length of teaching prohibition, A

teacher in one of the large schools says that it is almost impossible to maintain discipline when the teetotal lesson comes Up. The children have informed the parents of what is going on, and the fathers have told the pupils that they are being taught "nonsense." Many of the parents do not believe that a glass of light wine or beer at meals is injurious, or is conducive to ultimate habits of intoxication. The children soon let their teachers know that they believe they are not being taueht facts. The effects of narcotics and alcohol was a subject always taught in the schools, but this last change goes far beyond previous lessons. Even those teachers who are prohibitionists confess that their faith in the wisdom of the leaders of the prohibition movement has been shaken, it is quite obvious that by insisting upon such teaching the authority both of parents and of teachers must be weakened, with no corresponding benefit. With all the discussion that there has been (luring the last forty years on education, it is clear that the last word has not yet been said on the subject. A strenuous effort has been made by the State to render children independent of any parental influence or instruction, and the effort has failed, and must fail. The school must not run in opposition to the home. Mothers cannot cast all their duties upon the State-paid school leache ', and take to politics. And all the evil of the tendency of the schools will be aggravated if "fads" like prohibition are forced into the curriculum, and if parents are compelled to tell children that what is being imparted to them by a State-paid teacher from a State text-book is nonsense.