OUR STATE SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 3746, 22 May 1899, Page 7

OUR STATE SCHOOLS.

THE STANDARD PASS. SUGGESTED ABOLITION OF THE ( SYSTEM. _ . A few weeks ago the Hon John MacGregor, M.L.C., a member of the Otago Education. Bdaird,Tg&yo|HO.tice" ofi his intention to move a- resolution affirming the 1 desirability Of Abolishing individual examination arid ; thb 'standard pass system in State schools. He accordingly brought the subject;, u£ 'at ’last week’s meeting of the 'Board/',,; The, remarks made .by,tha,mpv(?r.yrei:pipublislied in the “Evening Star,’’’ from tyli s ch we take the following extracts : ' I propose to show, that.the /‘education” our -system r prriduGes.'.i3, rib - /edrication at all.' And this brings me to the subject of my motion., 'And tri; Show, that I am not quite'alone in'this,''Opinion I propose to quote a sentence ftoiri a report made by Mr John Ganmetl/R.A.,; an ex-in-spector of schools, to.the;Councii of Victoria College, Wellington,;'on the renilts of his examinationa l fori'!; scholarships. Says Mr Gammell r “One thing atloast is certain: No ono cari'poruso such examination papers as thOsp that have been laid before me i on pjbsbrit occasion without the conviction, being forced upon him that the system of .primary instruction as■ carried out;ini'.these (districts of the colony (Wellingtons Nelson, Westland, Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay and Taranaki) is thoroughly-inefficient.” Such is the conclusion arrived 'at by an admittedly arid yet, so blinded are we with sheen optimism—that worst of all scourges, .that can afflict a. community—that - this condemnation of our vaunted system is passed by almost unnoticed. I am convinced that if an equally competent and ' independent authority were' -brought,'i say,' from Scotland, to. .report; ;Up6n “ our system , a whole, ' should firid that, instead of one , of; .the' ,best systems in-the .world, ,as (most people imagine, we have onei of .the -very worst, and that probably no country in the world spends so- much' mbrieyGin proportion to copulation) as we do for so' little result in the. form of reajt education its d istinguished from mere instruction, which is something entirely different in , -s nature from, education. , , -N party; three, Imhdred veara. ago Comcrcius ppinted .opt tie difference 1 when, be said .young are not educated bv forcing; intqrtherb. n mass of words and .‘sentences 'and cred' from books. - britTOyifepeiliag. their

iiuderstanding through things themselves. Now, what else is our system of standaids but a method of stuffing into the Children during each year a certain specified quantity of knowledge, or rather information (for it is scarcely worthy of being dignified by the- name of knowledge), in order that it may be gauged by moans of the individual pass, just as Government sluice-heads of water are gauged by being passed through an instrument devised for the purpose? Tho regulations proscribed for gauging tho amount of information acquired by the children in a year is precisely analogous to the method prescribed by the mining regulations for gauging water for mining purposes. We think of educate n as a moans of supplying information which, for various reasons, it _is desirable to have, instead of regarding it as a training process which enables oar children to turn their, inherited fa ulties to tho best advantage. A fund mental error in our system in both e! montary and secondary education is tr, be found in the inversion of tho two c sses of results aimed at. Tho first dr rnand of parents, tho first aim of Lechers, tho immediate result to ohta u which our regulations are devised, is tho acquisition of mere information unworthy of tho name of knowledge—a natural and rational training being merely a secondary object. No one whose intellect has'been carefully trained, who has acquired habits of attention, observation and order, who Ims had liis faculties healthily and wisely stimulated, can now find any difficulty in acquiring all the useful information or knowledge he requii'es. In school lif f -—and particularly in the early yc ;rs of school life—knowledge should he made the means and not tho end of education’. By making it the end, by si dordmating mental training to early ac uisition of knowledge, wo necessarily in reduce tho evils of teaching vords which convey no ideas, of making learniiv: purely mechanical, of demanding unwi ling and often unintelligent nttentT a, of all tho many varieties of tXiat in. utally ruinous thing called “cram.” Memo of tho evils attending our present system were enumerated by the speaker, among them being the following : 1. A system based upon standards and individual passes Is necessarily a system, not. of education, but of mere instruction, an 1 nowadays the distinction is generally recognised as fundamental. I need not further dwell upon this. ' But it is a faial defect in any system. Anyone who reads tho now Scotch Code will see that the authors of it had this distinction in their mind as their guiding principle, and that their main object was to make the system one of education in the true seuse—to substitute development and training of the faculty for the mere imparting’and acquiring of information. 2. Such a system as ours leads teachers and pupils alike to regard the passin." of examinations as the be-all and endall’of schooling—to regard education as a result rather than as a process. This involves a radical misconception that pe- vades the whole community, and It is the fact of its prevalence that explains ou; optimism with regard to a system which, instead of being one of the best in. existence, is one of the worst conceivab e, considering tho money it costs. Oj i of the prejudices now beemning cl: sical is to assume that education is re 'ilarly bounded by a fixed end or limit, ar I that it ends in an examination, bo\r d which the. teacher has notl ig to desire, ..and. beyond, which t> > pupil has no further am-bi-on. Standards and examinations as c .lied ur our system instead of being f log and helps to teachers and pupils r • harriers to progress and growth. The iV that a child who fails on the annual c-emulation, day to pass in, say, reading o jelling, or both, is to be compelled tolar ’her. whole year to remain in the s e class reading the same lessons is s' >ly a barbarous and unpardonable c ;e. Children, treated in this way lose a’’ interest and all sens© of achievement ! orvowth, and, what is worse than all, t' , r acquire habits of listlessness and ind- -rouco which very often mar their v. 'e career. To my mind, the evil ot s: h a system is So obvious and so hidecr. that I really haven’t patience to argiw on the subject. ; There could be-no tr ter condemnation of the system than t! ■ fact that the children,'after leaving s. >ol take so little interest in reading at thing worthy of being called hteratr They read scraps such as iitJi ■• ” and novels of a kind—tlio sort ot sl if that Rider Haggard and Guy Boothb' um out, which is not literature at all. A: for poetry, such as that of Wordswf th or Tennyson, they never think or rr line it—they would probably call it £( j >t.” They finished then* education w] -n they passed all the standards, and p> haps wasted a couple or years m “ ■ - irking time ” at a high school. _ T r MacGregor proceeded to point out t ; i if the Education Department cont: ied to ignore the representations ir !e on the subject, he intended,at some ft- ire time to propose for. adoption by ti ■ Board a scheme for testing the.etlici ;cv of their schools. He had several t : 'is contended that the department in T ■ linaton has no statutory authority ft • dictating to them as, to- how .they v 3 to examine their schools; But ne h 1 reason to think they might hope to s a change for tho better before long. 'he subject is to come up.for, discussi :: at next meeting. ’