OBJECTIVE FOR TEACHERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27387, 12 May 1950, Page 6

OBJECTIVE FOR TEACHERS

Development Of Critical Mind INDUCEMENT OF DESIRE TO LEARN Daily Tfimes Special Service ■ AUCKLAND, May 11. The aim of the teacher in these days must be to induce his pupils to develop a critical frame of mind and to excite in them a desire to know things. Mr K. J. Maidment, principal of the Auckland University College, said this when welcoming delegates to the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Association Conference. In his address, which he entitled “The Art of Teaching,” Mr Maidment also discussed the place of the ancient languages in modern education.

“We must try to induce in pupils a critical turn of mind,” said Mr Maidment. “This throws a strain on the teacher because everyone is only too disposed today to believe what he sees in print. We must get people to cease believing that what is in front of them is more than one person’s point of view. This is increasingly difficult when there is so much propaganda about. “It is vital that it should become a habit of mind in pupils that .they do not take anything for granted until they have hammered it out and thought about it for themselves. Getting pupils into this right frame of mind is one of the difficulties of the art of teaching, and places an enormous responsibility on the teacher. “It is not a matter of repeating things for others to learn,’’ Mr Maidment continued. “It is a matter of arousing pupils’ curiosity in things and getting them excited about wanting to know. Once a pupil has a feeling in his mind that knowing things is good, then you have won the battle. I think we are engaged in one of the most tricky professions in the world. The outside world often thinks that we go on doing the same thing day after day and nave an easy time of it. You and I know that that is not so in the slightest. “ The avalanche of knowledge in the nineteenth century has blinded us to the fact that the relation between science and the humanities is the same as ever it was,” said Mr Maidment. “Until then, the humanities were largely in Latin books. Since then other important contributions to human knowledge have been made, and the effect on education in general has been to make one wonder whether the study of Greek and Latin is the proper thing for us today. On the whole, I think that their day is done as an educational medium because the production of a really good Latin or Greek scholar is a most elaborate business and a matter of some 12 to 15 years’ study. You cannot expect any large number of people to be able to adapt themselves to that sort of study when there is so much more which is just as worthwhile as the Latin and Greek languages. “I do not say that the content of Latin and Greek should not be widely known,” Mr Maidment added. “The content of Greek, for instance, is invaluable.”