Aims Of Modem Education

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 17, 30 January 1948, Page 5

Aims Of Modem Education

Should Citizenship Or Efficiency Be Ideal

Belief that education should aim at a high ideal of citizenship as well as a high degree of proficiency for work was expressed on Wednesday in an address to the Rotary Club by Rev H. C. Dixon, Chaplain of the Student Christian Movement at the University, the training colleges and some of the secondary schools at Auckland.

Mr Dixon agreed there was cause for some of the recent criticism of modern education. The average present day stenographer, for instance, could not spell and certainly could not use correct grammar the complaint about bad English and bad spelling was no new thing and the “buck” was passed all the way down the line from the University to the primary school. One school of thought aimed at equipping pupils for some job, making them efficient technicians. Though that idea was somewhat old-fashioned today, Mr Dixon said, he felt there was still a lot to be said for it, “Damnably Clever” Nazis On the other hand the Director of Education, Dr E. C. Beeby, and his followers, believed the aim of education should be to turn out citizens of character. That school of thought believed it was more important to know what a person was than what he could do. One of the things that made Nazism dangerous was that its leaders were so “damnably clever.” True, those men. had a high degree of skill, but lacked character. , In concentrating on the technical side of education there was the danger that skill could be used for bad ends.

Both Angles Needed

Taking John Dewey as his authority, Mr Dixon said the object of education should combine both the ideas discussed. Personally he believed there was no real education for character without religion and the question of citizenship boiled down to a matter of ethics, of which Christianity was the highest ideal.

The old conception of a university where students gathered around noted scholars and lived in fellowship in search of • knowledge was fast breaking up. He approved the suggestion of moving the Auckland University to Tamaki and making it residential, which he. thought would tend to arrest that breaking up and help the students to learn to live together and become better citizens.