THE CITIZEN AND EDUCATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12955, 26 August 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE CITIZEN AND EDUCATION.

No. 111. JtV I'KOJi'ESSOR TALBOT TOIiKS. '.I'm; end of all this intemperate language? I shall be asked, not without reason, by those who have read my last number. To the charge I cry "Peccavi!" to the challenge I have an answer; for the offence, if any were given, 1 tender my apology. But the " gorge will rise" when intolerance speaks; and it seems that Time has indeed brought his revenges" when in his " whirligig'' he turns science, loud-tongued adversary of ecclesiastical persecution, into a still more intolerant, a still more bigoted obscurant than ever was the Church even io her darkest hour. Galileo fell victim to religious intolerance, and Science claims many another of her sous as martyrs to the cause of human advancement; but is it possible that Science has forgotten that for which her martyrs died? or is it that once again " Jerusalem has waxed fat and kicks'/" Human wisdom is human still, not divine. Icarus made himself wings to fly; but conceit carried him too near to the province where Helios the sun-god reigned paramount, and the wings melted and "Icarus Icaria nomine fecit aquas." The beauty of classical mythology is that its stories are quick with present interest; they arc written round typical figures. Is there no Icarus of this 20th century A.D.?

However, though it may seem that fulfilment tarries long, 1 have a promise to fulfil. May I say first that the dallying was intentional—even, in my own opinion, necessary? For if only reader and writer can agree upon first principles, then of their application short work can be made. Now, the first promise 1 have to redeem is this, that some suggestion should he made how to gather in the verdict of childhood, and learn from natural instinct how to discover the " born teacher." Lit it be said at once that teachers, like other people, must prove themselves. A search for a, " ready-made" article is foredoomed; enough if wo can find, with a reasonable margin of safety, the probability of success. And another point: Wo must extend our search to all ranks; and if that is to be done with success then, as a community, we must make it thoroughly worth the while of all grades of society to give each of its best. And that object cannot be attained unless the community accepts the lesson with which 1 have been this long while buffeting the public car— we want a good thing we must pay for it.

The premises then are admitted. Can we proceed to the conclusion'/ Two solutions are already before the public—a school of pedagogy at a university, a "training college" in every important centre. Both are radically had. .And for these reasons: " Pedagogy" as a subject does not submit itself to detailed handling. 1 undertake, without presumption or assumption, to give in the course of a lecture, not exceeding the normal hour practically all that can be given-—of value, that is—in the way of general instruction on the art of teaching. I do not say the lecture will be interesting, but 1 have so much faith in my own conviction, (lie outcome of neatly twenty years' experience, that I throw out this chajdengye to be taken up by whosoever will. I am ready for the space of an hour —provided it does not conflict with my duties at college— appear on any platform before any audience, general or special, departmental or other, and do my best to spread over the sixty minutes the statement of all that, so far as I can judge, is of value in the general maxims of educational science, As regards study I claim to give, in a second lecture of ;m. hour's duration, all that can be said in -my own particular branch—Greek and Latin. I allow to everyone else who claims to be expert—-in whatever subject,, mathematics, natural science, music, English literature— the same license, and ho more, of one hour. And I add, without fear of objection, that if he is expert he will be content with an hour— less. The rest is practice, observation, the study oi models.

But if " pedagogy'' be made a subject in the university curriculum it involves a "course," say 30 lectures, and inevitably deteriorates into a. narrow, hide-bound system, a system of rules where wo should have tree judgment, a judgment not only free by choice but in constant practice of freedom. There was a bock called, if I remember, "Lecture* on the Science of Teaching," written by Mr. T. G. Finch (the book I have lost and 1 am not too sure of names and like dentils), a Cambridge M.A., and an inspector of schools. It was published by the Syndics of the University Press (Pitt Press). There was quite a, number of" good things'' in. the book, and you could have put them, into the space of a dozen pages, while ihe book itself was "padded" with what printers, in their expressive way, call "fat" until it ran to some 400 pp. octavo of fairly close type. Suppose a. lecturer had read to his class the book as it stood, word for word—well, it may be doubted whether it would have taken him 30 hours, the equivalent, that is, of an ordinary one year's ■•curse of lectures at a university. Mr. Finch's book "killed" the subjectno one has tried to follow his footsteps or improve upon his matter. Now shall we, gentlemen, make "pedagogy" a subject for at two, three, or four years' course in a university?

There arc many other reasons against a school of "pedagogy," but perhaps this one is sufficient. 1 am most anxious not to exhaust my subject. A very similar reason holds against "training colleges," and 1 should like to enter a protest at once, if it be not too late, against their multiplication in New Zealand. "Training colleges" labour under every disadvantage which can hamper a university school of "pedagogy." They have also something further of their own. Individualism is present in all of its demerits, in few of its virtues. The student of a "training college," is invited, almost compelled, to accept the methods of his instructor. These may be good; let us for argument's sake admit that they are not good, but the very best—stall they remain 1 not the student's methods bub the master's. And though there is a right way of doing anything, still each one must fold his own ay of doing the right thing alter the general fashion of what is admittedly the proper method. "Knowledge," said Plato-, "cannot be taught.'' Everybody has heard of tin Platonic doctrine; not everyone carries it mil to its typical consequence in everyday life. l These, I hen, are reasons for doubling whether the best way to find the hue teacher is by "pedagogy" or by "training college." Can a better way be found? I am bold enough to think so. Free popular selection. 'The age of democracy is not likely to deny the value, under proper safeguards, of the majority vote by which it lives. But is if possible to apply the principle? Here the initial difficulty is all: Can such a system be set going? All are familiar with the practice of registration—from the hour of our birth to the moment of parting it is one series of registrations that makes up citizen life. .1, plead for one more register: The list of men and women who give promise of capacity to train and teach. Here l also start with the family; let. it be required of every head of a family to enter, upon due consideration pad, the name of each person who, serving him in some capacity as "help,'' "companion," "groom"— what, you will—lias shown in that capacity power to teach and proved it by the verdict of childhood. For, as has been already said, the true teacher comes from every rank, the humblest as well as the highest". Then lei- every master aud mistress now on. the staff of a school keep a bright look out amongst the boys and girls of each class for those, who may contain in embryo the potentiality oi teaching power. Let the career of such be steadily watched, checked, tested, registered. Let lists so formed, from family to school, be winnowed and sifted by

Hii examination, not of book-learning (though that may have its place, and, anon, its notice), but. 'of delivery, presence, logical power, power to convince and to direct. Think not the view is novel. "Most of us is always someone else/' and heredity means, not percentage-, but (he whole boundless history of generations past since man began upon this earth. Ninety-nine per cent, of you and me is primal savage, one per cent, is "culture." Hie soil is the same, though its constituents may vary— is still soil, made from the everlasting forces of Nature's workshop, rock and rain, frost and river, ail and decay. And .such is human nature, low-brow-ed, stunted, bestial; dolickocephalous, grandiose, divine; there is something common and its name is man.

Nor can it be pretended that no nearer approachthough this be near enoughhas been made to the idea, here at best a little remodelled, perhaps decked out in. newer drapery, or coloured from y fuller palette. Cecil Rhodes died not so long ago that the world can pretend ignorance, of what he was, of what he did, or even of what lie said. If ignorance could be possible, there is still his will, still that wonderful scheme by which lie sought to garner into the granary of our dear old country all the ripest grain a'nd the fullest earth's harvest of youth. Perhaps the full scope of the testator's purpose and the scheme which tries to embody it, is not wholly seized, or by all. Rhodes, it is no presumption to say, meant to devise a. plan by which there could be found possible " makers of men and leaders"which, being interpreted, is teachers, 'therefore did he devise a full method of selection, therefore opened the choice to till the earth; therefore, entering into detail, made his meaning plain by an ideal system of marks— all that he might show his executors that he wanted men, not ill esse but in posse. He wanted to find Napoleons, Platos, Pitts, Shakesperes, Goethes, an /Escbylus, an Aristotle, an Alexander or a Caesar; for he still had faith that as a man had been so he should be, and that the age of great leaders, thinkers, makers was never past. Now it will seem, and rightly, presumption to place in. near contact with the scheme of a Cecil Rhodes the humble suggestions of these papers. Yet Rhodes was oncd an undergraduate of Oxford, "lone mother of lost causes," which yet contain much that is fruitful to all time. And may we not pay to the memory of Rhodes the one compliment he would surely value, the compliment of, however distant, imitation. If then, from the child up, all our society were registered and in time organised to discover, and, discovering, to watch and train that' very type of eye and brain and hand and will which Rhodes required his selectors to find, shall we say that we might not make the Rhodes Trust even a greater power for good than as yet it is? Once established, this subsidiary system will develop itself; one© through it the proper type of teacher, the teacher with sympathy, insight, formative power, and, above all, discipline—once that type becomes in .all our institutions predominant we shall need neither "pedagogics" nor "training colleges," for even the humblest hovel becomes a training school and every parent a pedagogue. Is it vision or is there substance too? To the public the verdict!; to the writer, perhaps, the joy of having prompted, in however small a degree, fresh thought, or quickened the old, upon a subject never stale, the making of man— "The glory, jest, and riddle of the world."