IDEALS MENACED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 11

IDEALS MENACED

EDUCATIONAL TRENDS. —. HEADMASTER’S VIEWS. WELLINGTON, May 10. To many people to-day education merely meant the acquiring of a certain amount of intellectual information which could be asked for over the counter of life as soon as possible, declared the Rev. H. K. Archdall, headmaster of King’s College, Auckland, at the Secondary Schools’ Association conference. Unless, however, the great mass of the public could be persuaded to bo more sincere and honest in their thinking, he went on to say, the splendid educational traditions of the Old Country would be lost. The word * 1 education” itself, he added, was in grave danger of undergoing such a change that it no longer stood for an adequate ideal. I>T. Archdall pointed out that New Zealand was supposed to be the most British of all parts of the Empire, yet there was too little honest endeavour to apply the full principles of educational traditions of the Old Country to the circumstances of New Zealand life. “It is quite obvious,” he said, “that New Zealand cannot claim to be carrying on the British tradition of education while religion receives its present treatment in the Government schools and in the Universities. We should not toss these basis traditions overbtoard and then be surprised at the results.” There was a danger of New Zealand becoming too theoretic in its outlook in respect to discipline. The only escape from false antitheses was the reassertion that the school was a community of a definite kind, and that it was everybody’s pride to accept a common discipline in order to live a common life. Then it would be a matter of degrees of growth towards the ideal state of affairs in which order and freedom created each other. In the matter of culture there was a danger of departing from sound standards; we were too prone to train aptitudes rather than the general powers of reason and conscience. Much of the weakening of the heart of culture could be traced to the materialistic naturalism which lay at the back of so much current psychology. “There is little doubt,” concluded Mr. Archdall, * ‘that this determinist psychology is producing serious results in New Zealand, and it will largely prevent the cultural advance for which we hope and work. No great national culture will ever be created by a generation whose roots in the past have been so largely cut, and whose knowledge of Greece, Rome, and Judea is a diminishing quantity.”