EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE

Otago Witness, Issue 3339, 13 March 1918, Page 18

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE

At the quarterij meeting of the women's branch of the Cftago District Educational Institute, held on .Friday evening, the subject for discussion was " Some Weaknesses In Our Education System." Miss Lily Sullivan was the first speaker, and tbo faults she touched upon were all closely connected with the teacher and the syllabus. She first dealt with what almost all experts now recognise as a blot on- our present system: the practice of employing untrained- and inexperienced recruits, in the person of pupil 'teachers, in our infant rooms, the very place where the best and most efficient teachers should be employed, as it was in the infant room that the foundation, good -or bad, was laid. Children as they .went first to school needed wise, sympathetic handling, which the untrained teacher could not give to the same extent as one who had. had the wisdom and experience of years. The speaker then went on to deal with the syllabus, which she considered that all teachers must agree was overcrowded. Seeing that the chief aim of education was to train the character of the pupils, she 'thought it a pitythat in the complexity of little details this aim should be partially lost sight of. _She urged that less time should be given to arithmetic, as in after life accuracy and. some degree of speed in the four operations would be all 'that would be required from the majority. tFiner problems should be given, and such as are given should be capable of being worked out mentallv by the pupils. If arithmetics were curtailed_ to a certain extent we should have more time to devote to reading. Arithmetic appealed to the intellectual faculties onlj?; reading appealed also to the emotions. It was an undoubted weakness of our system that it does not permit us 'to devote sufficient time to reading and the of good books. The teacher of young children should be able to devote some time_ each day to reading or telling them suitable stories, and in\ this way their minds would become stored from their earliest years with some of the best of our great English literature. Miss Mackenzie followedSvith an address which dealt largely with the physical side of the child's education. She stressed the point of the necessity of cleanliness from a sanitary point of view, and pointed out the difficulty of securing this under the system at present in vogue. The majority of schools were not thoroughly cleaned, and until committees obtained increased grants were not likely to be. The then dealt with school buildings and furniture." Very many of those buildings and much of the furniture were old-fashionpd and out of date, and the lighting and ventilation of our schoolrooms were unsatisfactory. All of these conditions operated injuriously upoD the health of the children. Miss Mackenzie also mentioned briefly the insufficient supply, of fuel in many schools, the- absence of cloakrooms, the limited playground aTea. the inadequate shelter sheds, and the insufficient lavatory accommodation. She also spoke of the amount of clerical work that had to be performed by a head- master which could be curtailed or oerformed by someone employed for this class of work, also of the small .number of medical and school inspectors, and the consequent overwork entailed. A general discussion followed.