The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1880.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 584, 2 October 1880, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1880.

One of the defects of the educational standards of this and other colonies is that it exacts the same results from both boys and girls, and does not recognise the difference which is ordinarily found in the capacities of the respective sexes for mental training. In certain branches, such as reading and writing, girls, as a rule, are more apt than boys. In others, such as arithmetic and grammar, boys have the advantage. A master has perhaps for years to, teach a girl subjects which she can only comprehend to but a very limited extent, wasting his own time and energies on a task which from the outset he must recognise as a failure. The girl, too, also wastes time and brain power in a futile endeavor to accomplish impossibilities, when she might be acquiring other accomplishments which would be of permanent value to her. One can, outside our public school system, conceive a girl to be highly educated and thoroughly trained, who is yet unable to do a long division sum, but who, tested by the standards, would be in the background, Tjie fault does not lie with the teachers, but with the standards which and .deprive them of ( ,»,y fi r ,i power. It is the raMjiji^t^fJi^

grapes are a make believe and theigs a sham • they have to present the make believes and the stiams at every examination, and are rewarded in accordance with •their success in producing spurious growths. The time will come when there will be one standard for boys and another for girls, and both sexes, instead of being trained to a sort of uniform and monotonous nmenonie exercises, will be specially prepared for the business and pursuits which they will follow in their after life. Our schools are accomplish, ing a good deal for our children, but they might, by doing much less, give/a far better training. It may be said that our common schools are much the same as other common schools in all English speaking communities—that they are the regulation pattern, and that it would be hazardous to move out of a time-honored groove. In a new colony like New Zealand we can do better by taking fresh paths and using an intelligent discretion than by merely exercising an imitative faculty. Some day, perhaps, we may be fortunate enough to get a Minister for Education who will take a commonsense view of his responsibilities, and sweep away with a strong hand the traditional cobwebs that decorate our Standards/and which are so dear to Inspector-Generals, and so drear to the unfortunate children who are undergoing unnatural educational processes,