RESUME OF LECTURES ON EDUCATION. DELIVERED BY C.C. HOWARD, ESQ. F.R.G.S., AT THE NORMAL SCHOOL, CHRISTCHURCH.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 203, 28 June 1878, Page 2

RESUME OF LECTURES ON EDUCATION. DELIVERED BY C.C. HOWARD, ESQ. F.R.G.S., AT THE NORMAL SCHOOL, CHRISTCHURCH.

Third Course—General Subject : Great Teachers and Systems of Education.

Lecture I.—lntroductory. Ancient Schools

and their irifiuenco on the present.

Before commencing his lecture, Mr Howard briefly referred to the strictures of certain anonymous correspondents which had recently appeared in the public papers upon his past lectures, and which he felt were fully replied to. by the large attendance of teachers present that morning at the opening lecture of the Third Course. ...

The present course, Mr • Howard remarked, would travel over very different ground to those already delivered, and would embrace subjects not generally dealt with even in Training Colleges, where principles and methods of education were more particularly taught. The value of travelling as a means of education was first dwelt upon, but as few persons can take advantage of such a means,.of completing their education, the lecturer claimed the next best' course was to become acquainted with the knowledge to be gained in this way by reading books of travel, &c. and he drew* a comparative picture of a yokel who had never-travelled beyond his own village and a man who had travelled much. Travelling ie almost essential to a complete education, and probably the origin of the word journeyman was one who had travelled to complete the knowledge of his trade or handicraft. The object of this third course of lecturee was to supply as far as possible the place of foreign travel, or |»ther of books of travel, and he (thjs lectbrtr), W4>uld not claim any originality iv this, excepting so far as the manner in which he would treat the subjects.

Ancient Schools—Mr Howard described the various schools &b they existed in the earliest periods of European history, especially among the Greeks, and the care taken to secure the general education of the youth of the country. The schools were described as very old-fashioned, and the teacher as holding a very inferior status. Compulsory education was secured by the children being placed under the care of a " pedagogue," whose duty it was to attend them to and from school, and see that they did not loiter and play on the way. The various schools of philosophy -were next described, and an account given of their

tenets, 'which led to a spirit of scepticism, and tbe esvtablishment of the school of sophists. The " principles of this sect were fully ex- . plained, and the nature of the education * imparted by them, which would be called in the present day a good secular education. Mr Howard here read extracts from

Draper , B "Intellectual Development of H Europe," to Bhow that they merely pandered to popular taetes, instead of directing them, and aimed at specious and showy accomplishments as a substitute for sound •education. Hβ also quoted Dr Wells' Bummary of the Sophists' leaching, which embraces " the practice of "morality when it pays, eelf-interest, popularity, superfi--cial,and deceptive conduct, and to so live as * to swim with the tide and follow public

opinion." Such waa the kind of teaching •« universally imparted 25 centuries ago ; "but reaction was inevitable, and soon set in. Two great educational reformers, Socrates, born B.C. 469, and Plato, born B.C. 429, contemporary with the prophet r Malachi, then arose, at a time when the very foundations of society were being undermined.

(To be continued.)