THE TEACHER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8171, 12 July 1912, Page 7

THE TEACHER

(By Edith Howes.) It is the merest truism to say that the individual training of each child is of the utmost importance, both to himself and to the future of the nation. Yet many teachers in our schools must bo said to act as if the opposite were the case; as if the child individually were nothing, tho class or school everything. It is true that the present system of education forces the teacher to operate on mobs of such unwieldiness that individualisation during school hours is made practically impossible; it is true that tho buildings in which he works are constructed so as generally to preclude concentration ; that his tools are utterly inadequate; that ho is surrounded by dirt, discomfort, and distraction. Yet, while admitting all these drawbacks to tho highest performance of his duty, it must still bo affirmed that ho does not, as ho might, realise the great need of the child; that he is strangely careless of its good. In tho matter of health "he” is certainly the pronoun to bo used. In this, women are, os a rule, more thoughtful than men. It is not only in attention to ventilation, warming, and periodic freedom from the cramp of long sitting that he so often fails; it is also in his utter disregard of the physical incompleteness of his pupils when pushing them mentally. For the sake of the master’s career, specially bright children are worked after hours, are crammed and overcrammed, till they take all manner of scholarships —and develop all manner of nervous complaints. How many cases of breakdown, of later debility, and even insanity, are due to this mental overstrain, it would bo hard to say. In a word, helpless children are exploited for a man’s personal aggrandisement. Scholarships give tho school and master "a name." Few know at what a cost. A father with some perception of tho truth, was heard to say recently: "Tho Rector of the Cramitin School begged me to send him my Jack. He said he would do wonders with a boy so keen at his work. I refused. Jack is rather delicate now. I didn't want to sea him in tho lunatic asylum." Tho power for mischief lies in tho master's carelessness of the child's ultimate good. Too often he values, not tho effect of tho school on the child, but the effect of the child on the name of the school. It is the commercial spirit. The master might be a shopkeeper, scholarships his goods, the child is advertisement. More especially is the physical harm operative in high schools, where tho amount of brain activity and the long hours of night work are to a fast-growing youth or girl distinctly overwhelming. Tho teacher of each different subject gives his load of nightwork to be done, not knowing how much has been given in tho other rooms, and the child, unless of more than average ability, has to sit up into the late hours to get it done. And that comes after a day already spent in mental work. Of course, it is the fault of the system followed, rather than tho teacher, but tho teacher, who should recognise the abuse, should also institute the reform. Of the real mental good of the children under his direction, the average teacher is startlingly careless. It is astounding that a man who spends long years in the training of the growing mind should [not discover the tremendous wrong that •is being done to the children of our schools; or, if he does discover it, should not lift his voice to make it known. How can he tail to see that the herding together in great classes, the consequent forced marking timo at ihe level of tho mediocre minds, and the impossibility of individual teaching, must produce, and are producing, a dull uniformity, n steady suppression of individuality, a loss of that interest and enthusiasm which should institute a joy m future selfeducation? If he sees tho wrong, how can he boar to remain silent? Why does he not deal with it in his institute meetings, toll it in season and out, educate the people on tho matter till the thing becomes the burning question of the day, and public men must needs take heed. It is tho future of the people which is at stake. We are turning out the wrong product from our schools. Instead of the alert, inquiring mind, the ready hand, the eager wish to carry on the training of some individual gift, we are turning out incurious, unthinking little people, wearied already of learning, patterned so universally on the same dull plan that they have no consciousness of individual gifts. It would, besides, be better for tho teacher himself if ho agitated for reform. He, as well as tho child, has to suffer from unwieldy classes. His are tho wild rush against time, the undue mental strain, more severe, probably, than in any other walk of life, the oarly loss of freshness and often of health, consequent on such undue strain, and, above all, the terrible discouragement of unsuccessful work. For, when ho thinks, ho must realise that his training of tho child under present conditions is eminently unfruitful in the qualities which go to make an alert, self-reliant nation. It would bo to his own interest so to direct public attention to the educationally ruinous effect of big classes that the matter must be dealt with and reforms established. He should not rest until such a system of staffing is established that the present hugs classes become unnecessary. Ho knows, or ought to know, as no onp else can know, the futility and iniquity of mob-teaching. Naturally much talk of expense would follow tho attempt to obtain adequate staffing. Besides the extra salaries, more training schools would be required. And teachers nowadays are strangely not content with starvation wages. All true. But is the money at present epont to tho best advantage ? Is the amount spent on tho primary schools commensurate with that spent on the secondary schools? It is a fine ideal, that tho way to the university should bo open to ©very child of ability, but tho greater the height of tho ©office the more attention must bo paid to its foundations. If the foundations of our system are satisfactory, how is it that teachers of secondary schools complain loudly and almost unanimously of the quality of the pupils sent to them from tho primary schools, affirming that their efforts to secure real study are unavailing, and that therefore, high schools are a waste. There are flaws in tho foundations, the greatest being tho want of teachers. A man may talk to forty or fifty or sixty or even seventy pupils at a time: he cannot educate them. The day is not long enough for the supervision and correction of individual efforts in the various subjects. A man may educate twenty or twenty-five children _ together, provided his accommodation is suitable; as the number grows larger, possibility of real education diminishes. But even though expenses were much augmented hy sufficient staffing tho teacher must feel that the means for true education is tho right channel for the people's money, and that what is spent wisely on the schools is thereby saved in prisons and reformatories. And so, in advocating reform.'ho will not be frightened by the money bogey. The first and immediate necessity is that the teacher should be keenly solicitous for the real welfare of the children; solicitous that tho training he gives should be not merely for the sake of the school or certain examinations, but for life. . Once imbued with this ideal, he cannot, dare not, rest till he has taught the people the impossibility of real education under existing conditions.