TEACHING OF HISTORY.

Waipa Post, Volume XII, Issue 945, 22 May 1920, Page 2

TEACHING OF HISTORY.

THE NEW IDEA. GROWTH OF EMPIRE. A short talk on educational questions was given to a conference of teachers and inspectors assembled in Wellington recently by Dr Newton Travelling Professor of Imperial History of London University. Dr. Newtown is the first holder of the chair, which was established under the Cecil Rhodes Trust. Dr. Newton discussed generally the composition of the curriculum, dealing with it in most part from the point of view of secondary and higher education, and with the special virtues and disabilities of certain special courses of study. He was most interesting in his remarks on the teaching of history. He was of the opinion that the study of history ought to be given much importance among the subjects to be taught to the young, and that the matter to be taught under this head should not be simply the contents of text-books of the old pattern. It was proper that the child should be given some idea of the growth and development or the free institutions of British countries, so that he might have some good idea of how the things he saw around him came to be. This was knowledge most necessary-to the boy or girl who would one day have to exercise the rights and duties of citizenship. Without that knowledge there was danger that wrong ideas would be formed, and the community was in the greatest danger of falling under the worst possible form of government—rule by an uninformed ■ democracy. In these islands he did not consider that history should be taught from the narrow viewpoint still adopted in England. The chile in these parts of the world ought to know something of the growth of the colonial Empire. There should also be more study of human geography than had been common in the past. A heavy vote of thanks was accorded to the visitor for his address on the motion of Dr. Anderson, Director of Education, the seconder being Mr T. U. Wells.