EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6126, 12 March 1898, Page 7

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE.

ANNUAL MEETING. The sixteenth annual meeting of the North Canterbury branch of the Educational Institute was held last night at the rooms of the Toung Men's Christian Association. Mr C. S. Howard, president of the branoh, was in the chair, and there wa3 an attendance of about fifty teachers. ANNUAI REPORT. The report showed that since last annual meeting the Institute had lost by death Mrs T. S. Foster, head-mistress of the Girls' High School, and Mr J. Simpson, master of the Dunsandel School. It was hoped that the improvement with regard to the sewing syllabus, concerning which several resolutions had been passed, would afford a much-needed rest for overworked lady teachers.. The report referred to the Technical and Manual Education -Bill, the chief. part of .which had become law since it had been under the consideration of a special committee of the Institute. It. was. .gratifying to note the continued success which attended the annual conferences, and that the cause of education was steadily and constantly progressing. The branch might congratulate itself on the tact that one of its most popular and most respected members, Mr T. S. Foster, had been unanimously elected to the office of president of the Institute for the current year, and Mr J. G. L. Scott, another prominent member of the North . Canterbury branch, had been elected treasurer of the Institute. The apparent indifference of many country teachers was a barrier to the progress of the Institute. In these days when every profession or trade had its union, a feeling of self interest alehe should prompt all teachers to join a society which was .calculated to seoure necessary reforms and to improve the position of teachers, and to provide more elasticity in the system under which they worked. To descend to a -more sordid view of things they should remember that the: society was pledged to provide legal assistance *t°_r. * te members. At the second ■session of the meeting a motion would be 'gabled.. with -the object of securing the wmpathy. and co-operation of country j^chers. .._ Meanwhile they had to consider . - by what means the country teachers could be induced or constrained to join the Institute, and so materially help in the work of progress. With the section recently formed at Ashburton the Branch now numbered nearly one hundred and forty members. The finances were in a sound condition, the year having closed With a credit balance of .£5 19s 2d. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. The annual address by the President was on the subject of " The Primary School System, from a Teacher's Standpoint." Mr Howard said that while all were jnstly proud of the present system of primary education, those in Canterbury ought especially to feel so, for the system originated mainly with a Canterbury representative, the Hon C. C. Bowen. The system soon came to be looked upon as so perfect that the cry "Hands off" was raised whenever any attempt had been made to tamper with it. There was an old proverb, " Love is blind." They had refused to admit any defects in the object of their affection, and so it had come to pass that while in other countries there had been improvements and modifications, they in New Zealand had retained features almost univer_ally condemned by educationists. He did not wish to be misunderstood. There was much in the system they would not see changed, and one great point it possessed was equality of opportunity. But it aimed at a minimum of education for every child, and that minimum, even if reached, might not be a high standard, though a child who attained it could not be said to be ignorant. He would say, however, that the time had come when the standard of education might well be raised to the fifth. The education was free, as far as it could be, and poverty need not debar 1 children from that knowledge which would fit them to make the best of life. An increase in the number of scholarships would be an improvement even in this direction. Teachers, at all events, knew that the epithet of "Godless" as applied to tfieir system had no foundation in fact. They could, however, rejoice that a man's religious opinion did not bar his children's chances in the educational world, or himself from holding the position of a teacher. The machinery by which the system was worked, though not free from anomalies and defects, was fairly well calculated to do its work. The abolition of Boards would be a mistake, but the present mode of election was not quite equitable, for it was idle to contend that the committee of a school of twenty ohildren had as large an interest to represent as the committee of a school of one thousand children. Though all present might not agree with him, he considered Boards and School' Committees, deserved well at the people's hands. The exception was the presence on some committees of men of less than average education, and of limited views, who made it their chief business to keep the unfortunate teacher in order with respect to his school work. But as the committees became better educated to their work they would, with Boards of Education, prove a barrier to the. present tendency towards centralisation, which too often meant abuse of power or stagnation. He was not satisfied with the method of seeing that the syllabus itself was carried out, and the syllabus itself was somewhat overburthened as regarded arithmetic. He did not hold with those who thought the Byllabus too literary in character. He did not object to manual training, but if. children were not trained to think, chey would become machines. ' The syllabus already provided for manual and eyetraming by means of drawing, and to give more in that direction would be at the expense of the thinking powers of the children. The pass examination method as at present carried out was the great blot on the system. This "gadfly of examination," as it had fitly been named by the Hon C. C. Bowen, tormented teachers and pupils alike by day and night. The result, too often was that the pupil, asked to think at a rate beyond his power, ceased to think at all, took everything as it came Aland passed his standards. And so it came that a fairly uniform article .was in spite of Nature's efforts to the -contrary. There waa little encouragement for the natural tastes of a pupil. A tyjy might have a talent for drawing, but none for geography, and on leaving; school it would often be found that'his drawing was Uttle better than that of. a boy who hated the subject ; but then his geography was not much worse than that of a boy who liked geography almost as much as he liked apples. And yet we laughed at the man who because he liked fair play in his farm-yard, pared down the broad bills of his ducks to the same width as the beaks of hi 9 hens. The dead level of uniformity was not the only evil. The pupil was led to believe that his education was complete when he had passed the standards, and had not been taught to love .learning for its own sake. Books had been instruments of torture to him, and after he left school the chances were he would have none of them. We enfranchised our young people at twenty-one, but we did not teach them to. think about the great questions to be decided by their votes, and they were at the mercy of every would-be politician who could tickle the ear or fancy. He claimed that dull and deadening uniformity, the less of influence of the character of the teacher upon that .of the scholar, and atrophy of the thinking and reasoning powers, were results of the individual pass Bvstem, and it was never the intention of the Hon C. C. Bowen that the individual pass should be embodied in the examination scheme. Mr Howard then reviewed the old Canterbury Provincial system in detail, mentioning as the one point in which it was superior to fche present system was, that it allowed the free classification of pupils at the discretion of the teacher. In fact, the old system was very similar to that at the present day in use in England, the main difference being that the Home system was more elaborate. England had Buffered from a similar epidemic oi

"passes," and was convalescent under her present system. There were only three compulsory pass subjects in England, and oven in these the master could' present a quarter or a third of his class as a sample. In New Zealand there were seven pass subjects, several class subjects, and lest teachers Should have idle hands, as alluded to by Dr Watts, they were further provided with extra subjects. Thus they might conclude that our system would be greatly improved if the work of the present six standards were distributed over seven; the pass subjects reduced to three, or at the most four; the standard, of .education raised to the fifth ; and individual classes below the fifth done aWay With in order to leave the teacher complete freedom below that standard. He yielded to no one in his admiration of the system, but believed that the people might be hurt in endeavouring to keep it from harm. He was not without hope that, in expressing his. own opinions, he had voiced that of some of his hearers, and hoped that they believed with him that though the changes hinted at might not produce an educational millenium in which the wicked schoolboy would cease from troubling and the weary teacher be at rest-^results more nearly in keeping with the large sums of money spent by the people, the thoughtful care of boards and committees, the hard plodding of the boys, and the devotion of inspectors and teachers, might be attained. A vote of thanks to the President for his address, moved by Mr Watkins aud seconded by Mr Baldwin, was carried by acclamation, and the meeting terminated to resume at the Normal School at 10.30 this morning.