THE NEW SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

Colonist, Volume XLVI, Issue 10974, 14 March 1904, Page 4

THE NEW SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

Mr Frank Tate, M.A~~, the "Director of Education in the State of Victoria, in an address given at Dunedin the other day, said:— "One of the best statements of the aim of modern education was to be found in the words: 'Education is not merely a preparation for life ; it is life itself. ' In this sense a teacher should aim at giving a boy of ten years the power of being and of doing all that as a boy of ten years he is capable of being and doing. New syllabuses and new methods insisted that knowledge given in school should be suited to the stage of development of the child, and most important of all, should be immediately applied. This was tbe reason why such forms of thought expression as drawing, modelling, oral composition, etc., were now made much of. The golden rule of the new education is: 'No impression without correlative expression.' May examples were given from school lessons. The truest lives were those in which there was petfeet coincidence between impression and correlative expression. ' The ideal was the man open on every side to line, stimulating impressions, and interpreting them into fine acts. Too many lives were dwarfed and starved by a divorce between ;„ these correlatives. From the earliest school stages children should be practised in applying to tbe facts of everyday life the knowledge given. Another conception of modern education was that each child must in the true sense be his own educator. The teacher must be able to arouse his self-activity. Hence so much stress was laid upon the doctrine of interest- The way ,to educate a boy was to get him to work; the way to get^him to work was to interest him ; the^ way to interest him was to vitalise his tasks by linking them to some reality which] to him."