EDUCATION, TRUE AND FALSE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4395, 28 June 1901, Page 4

EDUCATION, TRUE AND FALSE.

The speeches delivered at the presentation of University diplomas to those students of th e Victoria College who have gained degrees wore not distinguished by great erudition. Neither did they deal with any pressing educational problem. They were for the most part of the “bread and butter” order, and perhaps fittingly so, at a meeting held in connection with so young an institution as the Victoria College. Sir James Hector made some observations with regard to the value of degrees, and discoursed in an interesting manner on the remarkable progress made by the New Zealand University during the thirty years of its existence. It must have delighted the Chancellor to dwell upon this topic, but his speech seems to have palled at times on the students themselves. His remark that the granting of a degree being but “the beginning of a life’s career to the person who received it,” might have been supplemented by his declaring that many a student’s career ended at such a capping ceremony as that over which Sir James was then presiding. It is the deliberate opinion of many who have given attention to the subject of our school ami university education that thousands of young men honoured with university diplomas have soon afterwards sunk into poverty and obscurity. AVhy those who have take* degrees fall from the high estate to which they were raised by their university honours on capping day might form a fitting subject for discussion at the next ceremonial connected with the Victoria College. Let it not be for a moment supposed that we are dissatisfied with the work of our scholastic institutions. According to the methods adopted, the results are all that could bo expected. If teachers in our schools, and professors in our colleges have to conform to certain methods whereby “a uniform type of mind” is produced, and scholars and students are turned out like so many bobbins from a lathe, the fault does not lie with the teachers, but with a system that aims at uniformity, and so retards rather than encourages the intellectual development and individuality of these taught. The fringe of this subject was touched in a speech by Professor Easlerfield, that rose at times above the ordinary conventional utterances on such occasions, but he did so in a way. that did not' indicate that he recognised any defects of the system. He let us know that “no less” {fewer, the Professor doubtless meant) “than five students attending

... s classes had broken down from overwork” ; and the reason for this he thus .stated;—‘‘The difficulty was that students having worked to the greatest extent in subjects which they liked, then tried to work with subjects they did not like, and failed signally in consequence.” Now, if that is the case, and we have no reason to doubt it, there must be something radically wrong with a system that compels all students tc be crammed with the same kind of knowledge, in order to obtain the envied degree, without regard t o their individn al tastes and capacities. Professor Sasterfield has practically confessed that the minds of the students must be forced into certain conventional channels, and

that they must “cram” a certain amount of knowledge on a subject that is distasteful to them, before they cun secure the “ultima thulc” of a university course—a degree. If a person of character and individuality who delights ia mathematics cannot “devil” sufficient Latin and Greek, which he detests, he is ‘plucked,” while another possessed of no originality, but whose mind is of the sponge order, absorbs just sufficient of each of the six subjects to enable him to obtain the coveted degree. It cannot be said that such a system draws out and rewards the best that is iu the student, and therefore it is not true education. The errors of the system cannot, of course, b e charged against the teachers of cur schools, or the professors of our universities. The majority of them know' how pernicious to true intellectual development the system is to which they have to conform. The evils of classification in our primary schools are continued right up to the universities; and, as Mr H. E. Gorst, on© of tho foremost educationists of Great Britain, has remarked, “hundreds and thousands of young men and women leave our schools and universities fashioned after a set pattern, like so many sausages from a Chicago factory. Each is provided with precisely tho same stock of knowledge, and consequently the market becomes overcrowded with enormous numbers of workers all trained to perform the same set of functions.” Tho training they have undergone in gaining their diplomas at the university, and even before they reach that stage, has destroyed, to a greater or less degree, their individuality, and since tho market is glutted with the educated personwho has not been taught to think for himself, the possession of a university diploma, and all that that means, be* comes rather a hindrance than an aid to a successful career in life. The subjects taught in our schools and col* leges are not unprofitable in themselves; but when every scholar of a class of, say, fifty pupils has to be crammed with sufficient knowledge on a given number of specified subjects in order to obtain a “pass,” be it to a higher standard or a university degree, the result is to retard the intellectual development of hundreds of our young people. Among those who have given earnest heed to the defects of our educational methods the classification system is condemned, and tile opinion is fast growing into a conviction that the curriculum ought to b e simplified for both school and univei' sity, greater latitude allowed the teach* or of primary schools in advancing pupils, and greater freedom on tho part of the university student to obtain a degree on reaching a standard of proficiency in those subjects which are in .keeping with his mental capacity and aspirations. It is very probable the Teachers’ Salaries Commission will have something to say on this subject, and what it says may bo made the be* ginning of a much-needed reform in the education system of this country.