EDUCATION WRONG

Taranaki Daily News, 25 July 1931, Page 17 (Supplement)

EDUCATION WRONG

CHIEF SCOUT’S VIEW’S. London, July 17. “They are fine boys and girls in New Zealand and Australia, but the educationists are following the example of Britain and bringing up the children by mass production methods. That is ail wrong,” said Lord Baden-Powell, the Chief Scout, in an interview with the Evening News. “I have watched the modern child’s mind changing since the scout movement began in 1908,” he said, “but the authorities are still in the same old rut. Modern youth demands freedom. It does not want reading, writing, and arithmetic, but clamours for self-expression. Yet the educationists pack them in classrooms and evolve them on a mass-pro-duction model. Can we survive if we continue to hold the theory that children can be equipped by a process similar to turning out a cheap motor car? There should be smaller school classes, and every child should be carefully nurtured.”