SOME EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18444, 30 March 1922, Page 4

SOME EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS.

A feature of the conferences in London and Manchester were the reports upon educational experiments in certain schools. Thus, the problems of school liberty, usually associated with Madame Montessori, have been further tested by Miss Bassett, head mistress of the Streatham High School, a large institution in the south of London, with 700 or SOo pupils of the middle class. For a year Miss Bassett has been working upon tbe Dalton system, which aims at making each school a community, where the mutual interaction of groups is possible. The whole problem of work is approached from the pupil’s point of view, giving the child responsibility for, and interest in, its own education. At the beginning of each month every girl receives a syllabus of work to be done. Some class lessons are given, and the girl may study any subject she likes, bat she must try to reach the goal set by the syllabus. There are three of these syllabuses in each form, for one the slow girls, another for the “average” girls, and a tlnre for the brilliant girls. A boys’ school conducted on similar lines has been founded at Bembridge, in the Isle of Wight. There, the ordinary curriculum is used, but is supplemented by a school museum and art gallery. Each term there are fresh exhibits, covering the subjects to be treated during the three months. Societies have been formed for the study of local history, including a survey of Bembridge. For a book, which will be published, one of the boys wrote a geology chapter, another wrote on the bird life of tile district, and a third the local history. English history is not taught at Bembridge as an isolated subject, but in its relation to world happenings. I At Bembridge the spirit of John Ruskin is paramount. At the King Alfred School, the ideals of Frobel and Herbert are being tested. Here the chief aim is to test the theory of coeducation, in the belief that by living and learning together boys and girls are best prepared for their common life in later years. Competition is discouraged by the abolition of class marks and prizes; discipline is based upon an ideal of self-discip-line. The children take an active share in the government of the school, and only those rules are Imposed which can be justified to the child’s o-jn reason. The cultivation of observation and the encouragement of self-expression in art ano. craft, and the spoken word, are other guiding tendencies at the King Alfred School.