"NO LONGER THE MAN HE WAS."

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 969, 9 November 1910, Page 6

"NO LONGER THE MAN HE WAS."

THE TEACHER AND DISCIPLINE.', (By Telegraph.-Special Correspondent.) . Wanganul, November 8. The monthly report, submitted to the Wanganui Education Board by Chief Inspector Braik, contains interesting reference to school discipline. He says: —I erhaps schools differ more from eacli other in respect of discipline than in respect of any other phase.of school lire. An animated correspondence was recently carried on in the London limes" on the subject of present-day school discipline. One correspondent put the case thus:—'Schoolmastersare, every year, becoming more dwarfed and puny. It is tho proper task of the schoolmaster to be guide, rider, and at times autocrat, but he is becoming apt rather to cater and cajole, for he is no longer the man. he was.'" ."At hrst sight," comments Mr. Braik, tAis statement might seem to have no necessary connection with our New Zealand primary schools, but, occa. B {.°li y ' wiiea w «deom it'our duty to challenge laxness of tone, we are met by the rejoinder that the tone is the outcome of tho deliberate policy of the teacher, the justification being that this is the way the thing is done, in America. However well it may suit in ■America, this heresy cannot, be countenanced m New Zealand unless we ar« prepared to render it appropriate bj modifying our entire system. Discip. line need not be hard, mechanical, and unsympathetic, but it should be an active principle throughout the child's school life, so, that, during his -last period at school, tho teacher is freed (as m many, cases in our own district he is) from all anxiety on this score. Uno does not need to be deeply versed m political philosophy to perceive tha supreme importance of school diaaiplino to_ the State cheating, as it does, the prison, the charitable institution, and the devil, and laying the fovmdaviom of a well-ordered, independent, and successful life. -...■'