LIFE AND EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21952, 13 May 1933, Page 5

LIFE AND EDUCATION

ADDRESS BY MR F. MILNER “ NARROW CONVENTIONS.” “ Our conventional school standards are far too narrow,” said Mr F. Milner, rector of the Waitaki Boys’ High School, in his presidential address at the conference of the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Association. " The old examinational criteria are being rapidly displaced by broader educational valuations. The now philosophy of education has for its objects the development of the whole humanity of its pupils. We pay lip service to the dominant spiritual aspects of our life work, while concentrating far too exclusively on intellectual development. Surprise is often expressed by men of affairs in later life that predictions of brilliant success based on school performances are so often nullified by failures. The reason of this common experience is obvious. The traditional school valuations are pedantic and narrow. “The faculty of assimilating knowledge, of memorising, and of gramophonic reproduction is over-estimated to the neglect of such factors as tact, tenacity, popularity, address, and personality,” Mr Milner said. “In after life these, as well as the physical endowment of health, completely outweigh the purely intellectual faculty of receptivity. Unfortunately, the altogether undue prominence attached to scholarship and matriculation results not only gives the public wrong valuations of education, but by its publicity encourages far too many teachers to specialise on examinational objectives, to the neglect of broader and more vital aspects of education.

“Thinking men in all countries are turning with renewed faith to education—to counter the mechanistic interpretation of life, to save democracy by intelligent citizenship, and to raise the standard of life by dignifying and exalting leisure,” he continued. “ School power is more important for the British Empire than sea power. But suqli education must envisage broad objectives and show its fruition in the standard of our citizenship. Not that I would decry New Zealand secondary education on the whole. But it should 'ask for a spiritual process, a truer valuation than a wretched external examination test. ... , .. “ In my opinion, we teachers should utilise all developmental agencies in educating our pupils,” Mr Milner said. “ What a. farce it is to say wo teach English when we do not teach the pupils how to speak their native tongue, nor how to enjoy for life its unique literature, and what a sham is a secondary education which fails to inspire interest in civic, national, Imperial, and international affairs—which sends out its senior pupils without any training for the exercise of the franchise, without any desire to utilise good newspapers and magazines for keeping abreast of the many interests of this inter-depend-ent world.”