MENTAL DISCIPLINE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27572, 14 December 1950, Page 6

MENTAL DISCIPLINE

Importance In Education PA WELLINGTON, Dec. 13. “Perhaps in the advance of education we have lost sight of one of the greatest of all disciplines, the discipline of learning,” said the headmaster of Wellington College, Mr E. M. Hogben, at the college prize-giving ceremony today. “In this age, when the slogan from the cradle to the grave is freedom, it seems we must cling to that last discipline which remains—self-discip-line.”

Mr Hogben quoted a recent statement by the president of the Assistant Masters’ Association, London, that “ education is the most inviting of all fields for the entertainment of eccentricities, for the cultivation of cranks and the plausible practices of the stuntists. The latest craze is to avoid creating m the pupil’s mind any impression that he is working.” A tendency to speak about the three R’s as things of the past and to say that t-he three A’s (age, aptitude, and ability) had replaced them as an educational guide had, he believed, developed with the implementation of the report of the Consultative Committee on the post-primary curriculum. He felt sure that the committee, of which he was a member, had not envisaged this in aiming to broaden the curriculum.

It would appear to me that there is a world of difference on the one hand in training a pupil in the subjects for which he has special ability and, on the other, allowing a pupil to avoid any subject which he finds difficult, which demands consistent effort or in which he finds himself in trouble with “is masters, and to substitute for it some other subject which he imagines he is going to find easier,” said Mr Hogben. “ There has been a tendency to adopt this course, and I want to make it quite clear that here we have set our faces strongly against it.” Boy« could not be prepared for life unless they learned in their work not to run away from difficulties, but to grapple with them, and unless they learned to overcome difficult hurdles by determined effort.

The responsibility for the education °f b°ys was not one which parents ~.n <* ou t to the educational authorities and- then feel their own duty had been-fulfilled. “I am even told m some places the home has embraced the modern psychology which preserves harmony in the home so successfully by the simple process of never ohecking the child, but leaving the school to direct and correct. I must confess I am frequently amazed by the complete lack of knowledge and sometimes interest some parents have of their own boys’ school life.” he added.