FALSE IDEAS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27389, 15 May 1950, Page 7

FALSE IDEAS

Real Education BASED ON TRADITION Sciences Overlooked “ Ideas about education seem often to lean rather heavily on tradition. The adults of each generation are prone to attribute their own virtues and achievements, whether real or imaginary, to the mental and corporal discipline to which they were subjected in youth. They are ant to recommend, .accordingly, the application of a similar routine to the generation which follows their own, and such a tendency hardens rather readily into accepted belief.” This was stated by Sir Henry Dale, one of the leading British authorities on the medicinal treatment of disease in a broadcast address last night on the proper place of science in modern education. Although this conservative attitude might act as a check on potentially dangerous experiments in educational method, Sir Henry said, all should be ready to recognise changes which had to be made in the substance of education if it were to preserve a proper relation to the rapid changes in both the material background and the social structure of civilisation. Referring to the growing claim of the natural sciences on educational time and opportunity, Sir Henry 4 said that there were many people in Britain, and possibly some in New Zealand, who regarded this tendency as deplorable. Holders of this belief appeared to take it for granted that an education centred on the natural sciences would merely train a man to meet the technical demands of some industry or profession, would restrict his outlook on life to sordid.and material issues, and would accordingly fail, at least in comparison with a humanistic discipline, to make him a good citizen, to awaken in him a sense of moral and spiritual values, and to qualify him generally for membership of a cultured community. Before that assumption was accepted, however, its credentials needed to be scrutinised with particular care, Sir Henry maintained. The evidence of this humanistic faith was singularly difficult to find. All kinds of historical accidents and happenings, not strictly relevant, seemed to have gontributed to its establishment. After tracing the history of the “ new birth ” of modern science from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Sir Henry concluded by urging a frank and impartial reassessment of educational values in relation to existing needs in order to ensure that the true and deeper purposes of education were kept in view.