DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9535, 6 May 1909, Page 2

DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION.

_ • ■ ; — . — • 1 - JUDGE'S WITTY CRITICISMS. Hi® Honor Judge- Parry, who has long been known as one of the wits of the English law courts, recently addressed the Manchester Principal Teachers' Association on " The Disadvantages of Education." Taking as his motto the words from Proverbs xviii., 22, "A merry heart doeth .good like a medicine ; but a broken spirit drieth the bones/ the Judge said that the professors of drybones (the schoolmasters) had broken co many spirits in their machine that they would, not grudge him a laugh at their little failings. He went on to maintain . with much humour, but with a serious purpose in 1 mind, that the present system of education in our schools is all wrong. " Personally," he remarked, "I have always regarded it as a matter of congratulation that I escaped, from school at a comparatively early age, nor can I honestly say that I remember to-day anything that I formerly learnt ,at school, or that if I did remember anything I learnt there — except, "perhaps, a few irregular French verbs— that it would be of the slightest use to me in the everyday business of life. "If I were, for instance, to model my methods of trial in the County Court upon the proceedings of Euclid, who spent his lite in endeavouring to prove, by words, propositions that were self-evident even in his own very rudimentary pictures, I should be justly blamed by a commercial community for wasting their time. Yet how many of the most precious hours of the beet of my youth have been wasted ior me by schoolmasters,, who were so dull as not to perceive that Euclid, like Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, was the writer of a book of nonsense? Not nonsense that can possibly appeal tc> the. child of to-day;, but nonsense that will always have its place in the, library of those to whom the Absurd is as precious in life as the Beautiful. "If you believe at all in evolution and progress, and the descent of man from more primitive types, with its wonderfully hopeful corollary, the ascent of man to higher things, you must acknowledge at once that education has necessarily been, and always must be, a great set-back to onward movement. A schoolmaster can only teach what he knows, and if one generation only learns what the la6t generation can. teach, there is not much hope of onward movement." . If the teachers would only teach what- they know instead of what is uncertain, the Judge proceeded, what a quantity of lumber would be trundled out of the schoolroom . to-morrow. Teaching should be kept to arts, accomplishments and facts-— opinions and theories should have no place whatever in the schoolroom. "The true rule should, of course, be to teach children, especially in State schools, only acsertamed facts, the truths of which all citizens, who are not in asylums-, agree to be true," and the teacher should be as little as possible interfered with by so-called Education Boards and committees. Who could teach anything worth teaching who was being constantly worried and harassed by lWpectors and committees? "For my own part," said the Judge, "so oppressed am I \>j the futility of committee, that 1, am tempted sometimes to doubt the personality of the Evil' One, in the sure belief that the, affairs of territory would be governed more, to his liking by'a large committee elected on a* universal suffrage, of both successes. The work of committees should be devoted to choosing a good man or woman to b e . headmaster of a school, and then to leaving him or her alone. The inspectors should . be pensioned— and turned off on the golf links." The special disadvantage of the schoolmaster is that lie is " generally a man who, having learnt to teach, has long ago ceased to learn." The Judge pleaded for more simplicity in school instruction—the kindergarten system at the beginning, and the wise development of what the child could be helped to learn by himself. If you come to think of it, he said, all the really important things in life must of necessity be self-taught. It would he better to teach boys crafts and farming than many of the things taught in schools, and girls also should be more sensibly educated. "I came across a "servant in Cumberland whose education had resulted, among other things, in a knowledge of the catechism and a list of the rivers on the East Coast of England, but who did not know the name of the river she could see from the window, and who • had not the least idea of how to light a fire. What is the gopd of learnf ing your duty to your neighbour when you cannot light a fire to warm hint when he is wet through, without wasting two bundles of sticks and a pint of paraffin oil? One must not, however, blame the girl, nor, indeed, her schoolmistress, for probably she,- too, could not light a fire, and both regarded the lighting of a fire as a degrading thing to do. No doubt if you had pursued your educational researches in Cumberland to the source of things, you would have found that the committee could not light fires, and the inspector of schools could not light fires — it may be the Minister of Education himself cannot light a' fire — and, though there is plenty of material for fires in every board-room, there is nothing in the code about teaching children to make use- of- it."