SPELLING AND HISTORY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21052, 14 June 1930, Page 12

SPELLING AND HISTORY.

The annual report of the Inspectors in the Otago Education district is a document that should always be of more than passing interest to those who like to keep in touch with the daily work of our schools. Business men are commonly enough credited with saying that boys who come into their offices nowadays can neither spell nor write the King's English. Perhaps they said very much the same thing fifty years ago. It is generally understood that the methods of teaching spelling in practice to-day are more enlightened than those in vo<me a quarter of a century ago Whether the result has been for the better is not perfectly apparent. or we find the Otago Inspectors solemnly affirming: “The quality ot the spelling has not improved,” and telling how in many schools and classes they have found the spelling i n the general written exercises “little short of appalling.” he Inspectors point to a number of causes conducing to this result. It is not within our province to offer any comment upon their expert pronouncement, but at least it may be said to be reassuring to find them declaring: “ Surely the main aim of a spelling lesson. is to teach .spelling.” Here is a plain statement the force of which the layman can appreciate 1 and perhaps a corrective to a vague and foolish impression that may have been invading his mind that in modern school practice the acme of achievement is to make a lesson in any given subject a highly mysterious, complex, and all-embracing process. Among those whose school-days are but a fad” ing memory the conviction probably

obtains that the educational methods of the past* whatever their limitations and defects or unsuitability to the present progressive generation, had at least a quality of thoroughness. Spelling was spelling, and so with the other subjects upon which the curriculum centred. School is possibly a happier place for the boy and gijl o£ to-day—it certainly was not a happy place for their mothers and fathers before them if they failed to put forth sufficient effort in grappling with the mysteries of spelling. Upon the subject of history, with which is nowadays coupled civics, the Otago Inspectors have something interesting to say. They place stress upon the aims of the teaching of history and express doubt whether they are appreciated by the teachers as a whole. History, they observe, should have an interest fbr the "individual” and should help to explain him to himcoif to bring about a more complete understanding of the society in which he finds himself, together with the customs, laws and institutions which form his social, civic and political environment. Freely translated—if the individual referred to may be identic fied with the pupil—that might mean that the boy and girl of to-day are taught by history to understand why motorists run over pedestrians, why there are picture theatres and ratepayers' associations, why. Harbour Boards are necessary and also Capping Carnivals, and why Mr Holland talks so much. The Otago Inspectors, warming up to their work, go on to say; "Before us is a-newspaper sum. mary of the report of the Committee on Unemployment. This is a matter which touches many children very closely, and one which will no doubt be discussed in every home. What an opportunity for the teacher! A discussion on the matter, followed by lessons on the development of industry and the methods for alleviating distress and poverty, from the earliest times to the present, could not fail to gnp and interest the pupils at the present juncture. The regular and systematic examination of the past in the light of the present, and the illumination of the present by the searchlight of the past, would give history such a significance to the pupils that a few years hence they would become better citizens in that they would be enabled to exercise their votes and their influence in a more enlightened maimer.” This seems certainly very compelling and impressive—also rather overwhelming. Does the fond parent realise that his bleatmg progeny—who, as he knows, cannot spell, and whom he suspects of being a pretty tolerable dunderhead—has perhaps been engaging,in a regular and systematic examination of the past in the light of the present, and turning the searchlight of the past upon the dark comers of the present? Perhaps it is well that children have a magnificent faculty of leaving school every day. The parent who recalls the good .things of his youth may wonder who is going to hand down tiie dear. old historical. stories which have never left his own mind, and have helped him so much to be the citizen ho is-the tale of what happened to Rufus in the New Forest, of how King John lost his baggage, of the monarch who ate too many lampreys, of Raleigh and Queen Bess, and of Drake at Plymouth' Hoe and all that wealth of mental garniture which is the rich inheritance of all The tale of the Princes m the Tower versus the Report of the New Zealand Unemployment Committee—surely in history the older generation had the better of it. In their day histoiy seemed to be history.