EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27080, 14 May 1949, Page 4

EDUCATION

FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW By Mentor We sometimes complain about the amount of form-filling which we are required to do in these modern days and put it down as a result of modern bureaucracy. It may be illuminating to read a few extracts from the diary of an Oxfordshire (England) headmaster of seventy years ago. Here they are: January 29th, 1878: I have received the following Government forms—B, BM, 9, 60. 61, 62, 67, Circular 21 and Regulations as to certificate of age, etc. January 30th, 1878: I am obliged to give the whole of this morning to copying out returns for the attendance officer. The school meanwhile is occupied in repeating tables and school songs. January 31st, 1878: I am engaged tills morning filling reports as yesterday. February 22nd, 1878: I finished : the Government papers. When one realises that this particular teacher, with the aid of a pupilteacher, was also in charge of an allage class of 110 pupils and that he was paid strictly by results, one will see that at worst we are no worse off than this unfortunate teacher of 1878 so far as form-filling is concerned, and at best we are better off regarding size of classes.

From time to time teachers are irritated by those people who, in sweeping generalisations, condemn some phase or another of educational practice. The teachers of an English city dealt very effectively with one such accusation recently. When a local city councillor publicly stated, “As I go about the town to organisations, I find children of 10 and 11 unable to read,” they demanded that he supply the necessary data for investigation by the local school inspectors. The upshot, as teachers might well expect, was that the unfortunate councillor could not support his generalisations by specific data. We feel that, while it would be foolish to suggest that our educational practice and methods are perfect, much criticism offered in this country is of a similar type to that of the English city councillor —vague generalisations based on totally inadequate specifications. Education is one of the most important functions in a State, ana criticism should be based only on the surest grounds. To undermine the faith of parents and pupils in their education system, without the fullest possible evidence for charges made, is to do a dis-service to the State, and to all concerned with the onerous and difficult task of education. Education method and practice throughout the world is changing very rapidly—so rapidly that those who were brought up under an older regime can be pardoned if they fail to understand the method and scope of the new education. This new education is well summed up by Mr D. K. Hardman, Under-secretary for Education, Great Britain. He says: “ The secret of the wider education is activity, which is the major road to knowledge. Here the dismal reign of mere chalk and talk, of the mechanical use of the text book, and the piling up of parrot facts is finished. Schools must now mean not drudgery, but a time for the feeding and training of the emotions and senses through the arts. It is here that some schools have failed, so that children at 14 are longing for the day when they say goodbye to formal education for ever. But do not imagine that we think only in terms of mental training and character building by activity. Schools must provide all the usual school subjects —English, geography, history and so on. The point is that they should be taught not only ,in the class room and not only from books. Learning by doing is just as good as learning from a book.” One most important point which may have been neglected to some extent in the early stages of the new educational approach is that these subjects must still be thoroughly mastered. No one who knows anything of modern educational practice would decry “ learning through activity,” but it is essential that the learning should be just as thorough as it was under any former and now outmoded methods. At the finish of their primary education pupils should still be expected to know how to spell reasonably well, how to read fluently and clearly, and how to handle the four rules of arithmetic, in their various applications, with accuracy. May brings a spate of educational conferences with their series of Ministerial pronouncements and presidential addresses. Among the latter, we notice the plea of Mr A. M. Hatch, president of the New Zealand Technical School Teachers’ Association, for a greater emphasis on education for citizenship. There was a time, in this country, when “ civics ” was a specific subject in the syllabus. Now it has been absorbed into the general subject of “social studies,” with the result that the amount of specific training in citizenship may vaiw widely according to the inclination of the particular teacher or headmaster who draws, up the school prescription. It may 'be that we have been somewhat negative in our approach, tending to rely on a series of " Thou shalt not,” rather than to an active training in what a child should do. We do not suggest that we adopt the intensely active training in positive citizenship that has been adopted in the United States, where the teachers have the task of trying to blend children of many races and languages into one homogeneous mass of United States citizens, but we must at least admit that their training methods are positive to a degree. Elaborate codes of citizenship—in the classroom, in the home, in the street car, on the street, etc. —are drawn up, often by committees of children themselves, and even more elaborate machinery is devised to-'see that these codes are put into practice. School courts sit to punish delinquents, parental co-operation is sought, and class and individual rewards are given to those who obey the codes. The whole approach is practical and positive—the citizenship is something practical and real—a very part of the everyday life of the children. Whether the result is any better than our own rather less spectacular methods produce is difficult to assess. JWe do not suggest a wholesale adoption of such methods, but we do suggest that something might be learned from a study of them. For we could not find ourselves in disagreement with Mr Hatch in his statement that some improvement is desirable.