The Daily News TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1931. TRUE EDUCATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1931, Page 4

The Daily News TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1931. TRUE EDUCATION.

It lias been very pleasing during the past week to learn from the reports of Taranaki schools that good work has been done during the year. So much discussion concerning the proficiency examination went on a month or so ago and teachers’ organisations in some parts of the Dominion painted such dismal pictures of the children’s prospects that the whole country was alarmed. So far as Taranaki is concerned the results obtained by the schools seem to have falsified everything in the nature of gloomy prognostications and to indicate that teachers and pupils alike are to be congratulated. Reports from other districts which have been published recently have not, however, revealed a similarly happy state of affairs. Last week, for instance, the Auckland Education Board sought from its senior inspector an explanation of the “large percentage of failures” in the examination this year. Members of the board remarked that the examination had “proved the failure of the accrediting system,” that most of the adverse criticism of the examination appeared to come from those who had adopted the accrediting system in the past, and that the examination had 'been “no harder than it should be” and there had been “an easing in the work at schools during the past few years.” One of the most experienced members of the board, Mr. E. C. Purdie, bluntly declared that if the arithmetic paper was a fair standard of work in schools it was time there was an overhaul of the system. “The standard seems,” he said, “to require glibness and quickness of intelligence rather than profundity. My impression of present-day education is that more subjects are taught, and they are not taught so well. ’ ’ Auckland opinion certainly would seem, in the first case, to justify the Minister of Education in his decision to supersede the accredit'ing system, but that perhaps is the least important aspect of this matter. What has been said at Auckland raises a far graver issue, that of the efficiency of the present syllabus for primary schools and of the methods of teaching. Glibness and quickness of intelligence are, no doubt, admirable qualities, but their value depends entirely on the source from which they are derived. If they represent real knowledge they are good, but as the fruit of a superficially acquired smartness they are wholly bad. Mr. Purdie’s suggestion that there are too many subjects and that they are not sufficiently taught is worthy of the earnest consideration of all who are concerned with education; competent investigation would perhaps prove the wisdom of a thorough revision of the syllabus. At the same time inquiry should be made into the methods of teaching and controlling children. A Wellington headmistress in the ■course of an address last week was courageous enough to say that New Zealand might be tending to produce a race of neurotics, what with the fashion for small families, the fear of crossing or correcting children, the tendency to indulge them and “give in,” and all that moral slackness which “dignifies its mean self under the cult of ‘self-expression.’ ” The schoolmaster may say, of course, and with justice, that the root of the trouble is in the homes, where discipline has been relaxed and parents perhaps are apt to regard their offspring as a bother rather than a responsibility. In that case the reply to the schoolmaster is simply that the failure of others to do their duty is not an excuse for neglect on his part. He possesses certain qualifications and he enjoys great opportunities, and the State asks of him the best service he can give in the training of its young citizens. And unless we are very much mistaken, the teaching service will be found ready to do its part if those in authority will do what appears to be necessary in the way of remodelling the education system. Dr. James Hight, Rector of Canterbury College and one of the most progressive educationists in the Dominion, remarked recently that New Zealand would always have a special need, not of education, but of “the very best kind of education that the thought and

experience of the ages can devise.” He described as a grave charge against New Zealand the accusation that “we do not know how to use our leisure well, exercising aud recreating the mind on things of elevating or ennobling influence, but prefer to yield to the temptations of amusements that are socially and individually profitless and often only a form of dissipation or demoralisation rather than a means of time relaxation or recreation.” Is it not true that the man who can enjoy a quiet evening at home with a good book is nowadays regarded as an anachronism by most of the younger generation? That is not altogether the fault of the schools and the education system, but it is an attitude which suggests that early education is not being built on a sure foundation. The true purpose of education is to create and foster in the young mind the desire, the will and the ability to seek knowledge, and the child who has it will not even lack “selfexpression.”