DR LYTTELTON ON CRAMMING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20952, 15 February 1930, Page 16

DR LYTTELTON ON CRAMMING

‘ WAYS OF TEACHING. RIGHT AND WRONG. (From Otm Own Correspondent.) ' LONDON, January 9. The Rev. the Hon. E. Lyttelton spoke' on “ The Public Schools and Intellectual Training ” before a meeting of the English Speaking Union at Dartmouth House. Dr Archibald Fleming presided. The lecturer ascribed the defects of- ' present-day education to the tyranny of the examination system. He said true education was spiritual feeding. The late Miss Charlotte Mason, founder of . the Parents’ National Education Union, based her methods on observation of tbe child. When he read her last book, he realised what all these years they had been doing wrong, and that the child learned by linking a new fact to an old one. First, there must ta assimilation, second, rejection, and third reproduction. At a school which he had visited, ragged children II years old had had read to them a piece of - history for 10 minutes. Then they were ; asked to put it into their own words. When he had nearly done so a boy said he was muddled at that point, and sat down. _ There was no rebuke, and another child finished it. After 40 years of teaching at an English public school he (Dr Lyttelton) could not recall an instance of a boy ever confessing that he was in a muddle. The fact was that 8§ per cent, of them were never out of a muddle.-—(Laughter.) The boys at that ragged school learned ' , to appreciate Shakespeare and art. There was no scolding, no marks, and no examinations, and learning, for the dull boy was therefore Just as Joyous as to his companions. There was a natural way in which amind worked when it was learning, and if the mind was not allowed to workin that way nobody knew the mischief that would result. When a fact was taken into the mind and held. there reluctantly the avenues of thought were being blocked up, and mental chaos resulted;. The tyranny of the examination system resulted in a distaste for- ' learning. The whole system was amazingly complex. What one school achieved by experiment was driven jut ■ by the rigidity. of the system. They ’ ’ must endeavour to select boys .lor work ' for the State by some kind of system which would not make “cramming” » - necessity.