SCHOOLS IN 1979.

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17804, 31 August 1929, Page 14 (Supplement)

SCHOOLS IN 1979.

A vision of schools fifty years hence as light, airy buildings in the midst of large playing fields was conjured up by Miss L. A. Lowe, the retiring president of the Association of Headmistresses, at the closing session of the annual conference of the Association at Leeds, says a London paper.

Mis Lowe prophesied that in fifty years scholarship in its widest sense would include everything of real educational value. A new contact would he established with industry which might, perhaps, even serve to forge more strongly the links already established with the universities.

With regard to the Board of Education, they (the headmistresses) would like to see a body holding itself responsible for the education of children throughout the country, but Insofar as they greatly prized experiment, they wished it to hold its reins so lightly that the good private school would enjoy all the freedom of unrestrained action! “At' the same time the had or mediocre school, so common at present, should feel both spur and curb, and either improve itself out of all recognition or pass out of existence. The nation cannot afford to allow generations of its children to suffer from apathy in their early training.

Will Desks Disappear. “ With regard to the public school system, we hope for less energy to be expended on the paper returns required by the Board of Education. We hope to see more and more day schools in the country in the midst of thirty-acre playing fields, with buildings of a simpler and perhaps of a less permanent structure; with unrestrained provision of light and air, and far more space than hitherto for the individual development of libraries, art rooms, craft rooms, and rooms

HEAD MISTRESS’S VISION.

THIRTY ACRE PLAYING FIELD.

for music and drama. I should not be surprised if, fifty years hence, the item of desks, as we know them, disappears from the estimates for the furniture of a new school. “ I should like, however, to give a warning, lest the laudable aim of provided for the needs of the individual child tend to the segregation of children of varied tastes and abilities, as this is unnatural. As teachers, we are convinced that it takes all sorts of children to make a school, and though on paper a technical school, a modern school, and a grammar school may appear the neatest and most economical way of achieving the great ideals of the Hpdow Report, we should distrust a syystem of segregation which labelled children from the outset as if they were parcels belonging to the different railway vans of educational transport. A school limited in its range and scope would not foster good citizens or a true spirit of democracy.” “ Muddled-headed ” Children. Miss D. L. Walker (Sheffield High School), discussing the question of training in mental honesty, said that children were often expected to think without having enough food for thought. “ Their power of expression lags far behind. They are muddle-headed because we try to impose abstract thinking too soon. Our text-books are partly responsible, for they arc written from the wrong psychological ’ standpont and by the wrong people. The authors view thicr subject through the medium of their own adult minds rather than through the child mind, and they simply ask for mental dishonesty, if the field of study were more limited in the earlier stages children could be trained to a keener sense of the truth and to a more accurate knowledge.”