EDUCATION IN THE BOMB AGE

Southland Times, Issue 24012, 30 December 1939, Page 9

EDUCATION IN THE BOMB AGE

[SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THE SOUTHLAND TIMES]

[By 1

F. SINCLAIRE]

“It moves.” I preface my remarks with the text which some tacit convention seems to have prescribed for all who set out to comment on public institutions in New Zealand. Next year this text will provide matter for ten thousand lay sermons.

The educationists have got in early. Some of them have just been telling us, in this cheery and reassuring way, that at any rate in the field of education we are progressive—perhaps not quite as progressive as we might be, but still, progressive. The goal is undefined, the direction uncertain and liable to abrupt change. But the great thing is to keep moving. And we move. Why, even in the last twenty years so one of our educational leaders announced the other day—a new and superior sort of school has made its appearance in this favoured country: “The pioneers could no more have thought of this type of school than of the high-speed bombing aeroplane.” There is a happy valiancy of style about that remark, but its substance is trite and commonplace. It says no more than what most of us are saying and thinking just now, or getting ready to say and think next year, when the great festival of boast, boost, and bluff gives us. our chance. It crystallizes, in a felicitous phrase, the mood of complacency in which we are preparing to celebrate our hundred years of progress. DISINFECTION WANTED Now I am not myself an educationist. On the contrary, I am only a teacher. Therefore I do not as a rule exercise myself in great matters. Bur for once I am provoked to say my little say. Like one of my . betters, I ask my readers to bear with me if, in the midst of all this boasting, I also boast myself a little. I ask them to stretch a point, and allow a teacher to have an opinion about education. For I, too, am one of those who are being , kept continually on the march towards the Promised Land. Even in the days of Moses and Joshua there were those who murmured. I am glad to see that there are today some murmurers. I am of their party. I don’t believe in the P.L. And as for our modem Joshuas, I regard them with what political orators call profound suspicion. I think our educational system, as it is called, badly needs to be disinfected of pretentiousness, cant, and humbug. It is fair to say, before I go on, that the expert whose memorable phrase I quoted just now was referring primarily to school architecture. That is matter of some importance. But it is perhaps a matter for specialists; and I do not meddle with it. An educational system is justified, not by its buildings, but by what goes on inside them; not by its machinery, but by its products.' Here I claim the right to speak with some confidence. For many years I have been not only a teacher but an examiner. Please do not tell me that examinations are a very imperfect test. I have heard all that before. I know it. It is my refuge and my consolation when I have been examining some of my own pupils. But examination is as good a method as human ingenuity has so far been able to devise for finding out certain things. Examinations are not tests of character or piety or aptitude for money-making or capacity for leadership. But they are pretty good tests of knowledge, which is all they should pretend to be. The candidate who knows his work generally passes. That is my experience, and I do noi think it is singular.

But I am not going to entangle myself in argument. I deal in the humbler currency of statistics. I have lately been engaged in examining work cording to the official prescription, represents the reasonable result of four years’ training in a secondary school. The papers I have read come from perhaps a hundred schools in different parts of New Zealand. The average age of candidates is from 15 to 16. My statistics are based upon an examination of five or six hundred papers.

Of these products of our secondary schools— Seventy-five per cent, cannot spell; Ninety-five per cent, do not know the meaning of common words; Ninety-eight per cent, cannot explain the meaning of some of the most hackneyed quotations from English poetry.

I: 75 per cent, cannot spell My figures are “conservative”—l believe that is the word —for 1 have made allowance for occasional slips due to the flurry of the examination room, and I have not made too much of what may be called venial errors. What my statement means is that of our secondary schoolboys and schoolgirls who have reached leaving age, only one in four can write a page or two of English, in words of their own choosing, without gross blunders. I mean also that when it is merely a question of copying certain words which stare them in the face from the printed paper before them, many of them cannot do it. I cannot stop to argue with the school of educationists who say that spelling does not matter. A candidate for a commercial degree in Australia once told me that he "left all that” to his typists. But we cannot all have typists to do our spelling for us while attend to. the weightier matters of the lavv. Even if we could, someone must do the typing. And if the typists cannot spell, wherewith shall they be salted? It is hard to escape the unpalatable conclusion that somebody had better be able to spell. Why not everybody? I have also heard that we ought not to stickle for correct spelling, because a bad speller may happen to be a genius. I have not myself met any of these illiterate geniuses. What I have generally found is that bad spelling goes not with genius, but with mental indolence and slovenliness. lam no Rhadamanthus, I hope, when I say that

for my part I must draw the line. Geniuses may be privileged to write sonets, sonates, or even sonetts, and peoms with all sorts of amazing ryhme scemes. They may perhaps be allowed to discuss, in their own inspired way, the work of their peers, those great English poets who called themselves Spencer, Grey, Burnes, Tenison and were equally at home in trochic and dactilyc meaters. I am perhaps overfastidious when I say that discussions of that sort seem to brush off something of the bloom of great poetry. So I let that pass. But there is at least one word which our unhappy generation ought to be able to spell, more especially if it happens to be on the printed paper: I appeal with confidence to all progressive educationists against such major heresies as phycology, psycology, psycilogy, and perhaps even cycology. And to the more retrogressive I appeal to rescue me from the plague of flys and locuses which assailed me from the skies in the answers to one. of the questions. Perhaps it is pedantic to' insist that young New Zealanders, before entering the university, should give up the habit of writing about Moaris. I don’t think so myself. . . . But to avoid unprofitable argument, I end this paragraph with a select list which the reader may ponder at his leisure: foreget beleive comparitive centenial (the word “centennial” was on the printed paper) deffinately cxistance inimagine murmer warf

vetrin alright. t When such spelling is common, even an examminor of long experience, a hardened vetrin, may be foregiven for doughting wheather, even in this age of high-speed boms, things are alright. II: 95 per cent, do not know the meaning of common words.

Candidates for entrance to our university were asked to write sentences showing the correct use of the five following words:" arbitrary, imperious, oblivious, sanctimonious, querulous. The result was a deluge of Malapropisms: arbitrary courts, imperious conferences, oblivious errors, sanctimonious ceremonies. Scarcely any candidates knew the meaning of any of the five words. About 5 per cent, knew one, two, or possibly three of the five. Ninety-eight per cent, think the word “sanctimonious” means “sacred.” ‘

* . Ill: 98 per cent, do not know the allusions contained in certain almost proverbial tags of English poetry.

To allow for tricks of memory, nine such passages were given,. and candidates were asked to explain any five. Of the 500 candidates whose papers I read, only six knew that Marvell’s lines

He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene refer to King Charles I, and not to the Penitent Thief, or Sir John Moore, or “Dorothy Goldsmith, who cared after his brother Oliver.” Twelve of the 500 knew the reference in the song Charlie, he’s my darling,

The young Chevalier. Of the remaining 488, a few had at least the sense to say nothing. . A fair proportion identified Charlie with Charles Lamb: others preferred Charlie Chaplin, or another film star whose Christian name is unfortunately not Charlie, but Maurice. Well, there are some facts and figures from which I leave the reader to draw his own conclusions about the state of education in the Bomb Age. But there is one conclusion which I ask him to avoid. It is so easy to blame the teachers. And that, I think, is just what we must not do. I say this as a teacher who has to face periodically tha chastening experience of examining his own students. We teachers are, I suppose, prepared to admit our share ol the blame. But in my opinion it is a small share. We struggle against an evil which is not of our making, nor within our control. Therefore if any reader is for hanging somebody, he must not make a rush for the teachers. I could suggest several more eligible candidates for pendulous suffocation. And when centennial sports and spectacles are in preparation. . . . . When Mr Chadband put to his hearers the rhetorical question, “My friends, why can we not fly?” Mr Snagsby, it will be remembered, replied with admirable promptitude and brevity, “No wings!” If anyone cares to ask me why our educational progress is just now taking the form of a degringolade towards illiteracy, I reply, “No roots!”