WHEN EDUCATIONISTS DIFFER

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1029, 19 January 1911, Page 4

WHEN EDUCATIONISTS DIFFER

SIR ROBERT STOUT ON "PRO* FESSORIAL CANT."

"That all educationists ara not agreed on the wisdom of allowing the professorial bodies to dominate- education will appear if the writings of many., educationists are consulted," observed the. Chancellor.of tho-New Zealand University (Sip Robert Stout), during the course of his address to the Senate at Christchurch yesterday. "One of the most recent—in a book'published a few months ago— says: 'In every occupation "there is a kind of 'professional cant, and in none is it s». elaborately framed as in that which is technically known as the professorial. The last man in the world to \yiow wo should apply for a correct opinion upon the value of a thing is he who is engaged upon it. A Highland piper is apt to possess an exaggerated notion of tho place of music, in the world, and tha pleasure which it gives,.especially of that music ; .which. ho perforins so well. To the tympanist the sound of the drum alone gives coherence to the various sounds which are produced by other members of. the orchestra; and j have heard the . lecturer on poultry in an important University declare thc.t tho rearing of hens .was the best, possiblo training for the vucvnorv, rvs the birds resembled each! other so closely, whilst in reality they wero different. The lecturer m classics did not agree with him; lie thought that learning words out of a dictionary was a better method. It is the professor who is most completely convinced of the importance to "the w.orld < of that kind of education which he gives. Ho is the University, but that dees not prove the value of the professor, of the University, or of the business in which both are engaged. That must bo determined by other considerations entirely. . . . Whilst tho Italians of the fifteenth century were painting pictures there wero no professors of art, and 110 professors of literature When the Elizabethans wore writing immortal poetry. Sophocles and vEscliylns wrote' their tragedies : '-before Aristotla, showed them hoTT.'"