OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10691, 15 May 1906, Page 4

OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

IS IT RIGHT OR WRONG? ALLEGED SYSTEM OV CRAM. THE SMART AND THE DULL. (Special to Herald.) DUNEDIN, this day. Interviewed by a Star reporter with respect to Dr Truby King's indictment concerning over-study in our schools, Mr P. Goj'en, Chief Inspector of Sdhools, s:iys : — "The cases cited by Dr Truby King in support of his condemnation of our education system are unfortunately too true, but to my thinking they do not establish his thesis. They certainly show that of many hundred scholarship winners, two are now inmates of an asylum, but they do not, I think, iprovea casual connection between our education system and the unfortunate condition of the inmates. The cases in question are, !l think, well known tome, and from what I know of the temperaments and cii'cmn;stances of the patients, I may, I think, hazard a suggestion, that the effective causes of their lunacy are discoverable outside our education system. Failure of the brain may be due to causes that are so deep-seated in inheritance as to elude our ken, and that are made openly operalive only by circumstance or abuse of circumstances in which the brain has to work. In a highly organised system of education one must discriminate between cause and occasion. Anyhow, an adequate diagnosis of all such cases seems to me to require tliat we should take into account many things besides our system of education, as, for example, home and social environments and hereditary, with all its powers and tendencies. The- 'words of Dr King ought, however, to be a warning to parents of highly-strung eagerminded, ambitious children whose physique is not strong enough to bear the strain of ■competitive examinations. In most, if not all, cases of breakdown, the responsibility lies, I believe, much more with the parents than with the schools and system of education. .In the case of tho average child there need be no alarm, for he will do just what he must and no more than will pass muster in his class. He needs the spur, not the curb. As I read Dr King's address, the education given in our schools is one of unmitigated cram. Ido not agree, nor do my colleagues. Wc could not so chai\ulerise the work done even in the worst of - them." Dr Ogston, District Health Officer and formerly on the professional staff at Otago University, on the other hand, endorses -what the superintendent at Seacliff Asylum lias stated. He says the whole system is cramming to pass examinations, and not assimilating knowledge to be used in after life. Therefore, the system leads to waste of energy and no good results. "I speak of what I know. Many young students have come to mo in their university course, and I "have seen the evil effects of cramming. I take our system to be cramming without education at home. They are abolishing the pass system" because they found it useless as regards our primary schools. I have had to advise parents to take their children, from school because they were being over-stimulated by crams. The work of our primary and secondary schools is unscientiic and burdensome. It is nonsense to give scholarships to pupils who gain only 50 per cent, of the attainable marks. It is also a waste of time to push on such pupils. Nature has not meant such children to cram. I am aware schoolmasters think on the subject, as we doctors do, that it would be far wiser to train the pupils just to the extent of their capacity, and let the dull ones stop when they liave absorbed as much learning as they can. Treated in that way, the boys who are not smart at examination work would often shine at something else. If not pressed on to a breakdown they would get a fair chance. Some of them would make good business men if set that way, instead of being forced into the wrong ffroove. I have in my mind a coleague of my own who lrad to confess to being a failure at class work. He went up for examination at the same time as myself, and had to rely on cribbing to scrape through. His people had the good sense to see his> deficiency, and they put him into a commercial house, and as a young man he was able to return from Ceylon with a fortune. That man, if compelled to go througih with his university studies, would probably havo lost heart and become a failure. Another case comes to my memory of a man who could- paSs examinations without any trouble at all, but when he went to apply his knowledge by taking to a. teaching life, he proved no good and shaped so badly that his pupils derided him and pelted him with snowballs. He left the teaching and became one of the smartest literary men in London. Luckily ho found out in time his true vocation. Think, too, of the pitiable case of William Smith. He and I were at college j together. He was the most brilliant ' student of his year. He Avon a lot of scholarships, went in for the church, became a professor at Aberdeen, and published in the 'Encyclopedia Britannica' an j article tliat was regarded as heretical. After that he went to Cambridge as a lecturer. He was the most brilliant Oriental scholar of his day. You have i heard of his sad end. He died worn ! out at tho middle age. His brother, another clever man, died from tho same , cause before he got his degree." i

In the course of a lecture at Dunedin on Friday evening, Dr Truby King (superintendent at Seacliff Mental Hospital) had something to say regarding the new syllabus. "It is," he said, "absolutely impossible to cany out tjie requirements of a syllabus like tlhat conscientiously. The requirements arc not earried out at all, and it would be a most unfortunate tiling for the children if they wero." The lecturer closed' with a bitter condemnation of the feverish complexity of our educational system. Some facts adduced in this connection wero extremely shocking and! sad. Dr King quoted the case of a boy who was dwx of the Boys' High School and a girl who attained a similar honor at the Girls' High School in the same year, both of whom were now hopeless lunatics at Seacliff. The girl used to work till three o'clock in the morning, and get up again at six a.m. The boy passed tho first standard when nine years and nine months, and the fifth when 13 years and fivo months old, talcing a scholarship four months later. He passed the sixth standard at 14 years and three moiitths, thue passing three standards in 18 months, and the whole course in four and a-half years. When 14 years and seven months old he had rheumatic fever. He was at that time working for a scholarship, and when 15 yetus and nine months old ho took the senior Education Board's scholarship, topping the list by a large majority. He took a University scholarship when 18 yeans and nine months old, and from that time until he "became insane he was working at the University. -. Referring to the latter case the doctor said : "Some five years before he came to the asylum I was sent for by tho boy's mother, who said tliat he had become paralysed. I went to him and found him in bed, very feverish. By questioning I found that the boy had been suffering for some time, but ho had tried to walk up to school notwithstanding the agony caused by rheumatic fever, because his ono ambition was the scholarship. Tlliese were extreme cases," said the lecturer, "but the injury done to thousands of others was apparent iu the impaired mental and bodily capacity. " The speakor suggested that the syllabus should be greatly cut down and no child taught a lot of subjects at once. Every child should be weighed at school at least every tlirce months, if possible every month, and if there was a great change in weight the teacher would have to seek the. cause. The evening paper, in a leading article, strongly supports Dr King.