The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1912. THE EDUCATION COMMISSION

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1491, 13 July 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1912. THE EDUCATION COMMISSION

While the Cost of Living sion has been conscientiously dis charging what it appears to consider its functipno'f trying "merchants, admitting at intervals long statements which it plainly cannot mako head or tail of, by gentlemen listed as "economists," the Education Commission would seem to have been for the most part, industriously missing the point day after -day and week after week. It is possible that- with all their industry the . newspapers whioh have toiled after the enormous mass of evidence given before the Education Commission- have failed to notice a. combination between the Commission and the witnesses to get at the heart of "the education question." The Commission, however, certainly appears to have been concerned with almost anything rather than-with the meaning of education, which, we take it, is, pr ought to be, the process of making the best of the child-brain. PerhHps it will bo urged that the Commission's instructions were more like a leg-rope than a passe-partout, but an order of "reference that enables tho Commission to wander afield as it has been doing looks wide enough to permit some investigation into (a) the character of tho child-mind, (b) the sort of instruction tho childshould receive, (c) the. respective merits. of the syllabus of, say, 25 years ago and the syllnbus of to-day, and (d) the real purpose of primary education. No doubt there is some value in fchs evidence concerning phonetic barbarisms and in Sin Bobert Stout's remarkable statistics about the way in . which religion causes burglary. But the real education, problem is the problem of the primary scholar. Let the primary [scholar bo attended to in tfw right _6Dirit and .with wisdom, and all tho

other difficulties of the politicians and Departmental clerks and subclerks and other officials will ranw to matter: they will «,C S selves. The Commission aitopn™ fn be obtaining some r- n ;.,i iJ ', upon the "Lβ Wh^a^S? and we aw keenly appreciat- , e ni l!ie hßcegg% fm . J^. Cl >« reform, especially as there are cm rocord figures which show very plainly that the enormous increase in the Education Vote ■has been largely due to expenditure that has. not greatly assisted education, i\\ the proper sense. In Challenging the present methods m primary education in New Zealand, one can. derive some Cbnudcn.,3 from the fact that within the last fifty yenrs there have been many battles fought on the fields drawn by COMEKIUS, MOXTAI&NE, LoCKB,Milton, and Rousseau, ages ago. Nobody of sense would dogmatise on the subject, but that system is manifestly wrong which turns completely out of doors the theory that educating a child might be something other than the imparting o f agreeable facts in an agreeable manner. ,lt is heretical, in this community, to say a good word for the old syllabus, or to insist, that education may not mean the imparting of useful knowledge at all. Yet it is a heresy that is secretly cherished by most people who were educated under the old system. The people who have secured the control of education in i\ew Zealand are obsessed' by tho fallacy discussed by Professor An■bi»ew Macphail in his well-known n ». br ! l,lanfc essa y (in Essays in tallacy) ■: '"that the information winch a child acquires must have in iteelf somo utility apart from the educational value which lies in :ts acquirement." There is a middle course between the modern method of treating the child as a citizen with even more rights and a greater claim to gentle and deferential treatment than Sir, John Findlay's burglars, on the one hand, and of treating mm, on the other hand, as an essentially lawless and perverse creature who can be made useful only by strong mental and physical discipline. This is the via media of Herbert Spencer; lie held that all instruction should be pleasurable and interesting, and he was in a measure right in holding that 'the hardest work would bo done by interested pupils because they were interested, But tho tendency has been to stuff the syllabus with trivial and pretty recreations, at the expense of the old hard dull lessons that provided the child with mental athletic exercise. The'actual knowledge that can be imparted to 'a child at a primary school is small and of little value; it is waste of time to teach, a little child that needs to, be educated—a quite different thing. Pro fbssoe Macphail quotes with a keen relish a headmaster who, uninterested in theories of ; education, but aware, as. a man of intelligence, that a boy is a'.combined mind and body growing into a citizen, confessed ms principle in these words: "To lies a boy if he lied, or pronounced Oceana with a wrong quantity or did not attend to his games and mili tary drill." Unless we are mistaken, this simple syllabus' will appear shocking to most of the witnesses who have been bewildering, the Education Commission. Of course, the great fallacy we have referred;to has in New Zealand been supplemented by ■ numberless smaller fallacies. The chief is> that which lies behind the advocacy oE "free" education from, the cradle to capping-day coupled with.the abolition of proper sifting tests as "undemocratic." It is", inr deed, in the . name of democracy, and by people, who could not give- a good philosophical dictionary definition of democracy, that most of the educational fallacies are promulgated. A day' or two ago, for example, Mr. Brandon was told oy a member 6f. the o° mm ission that a system of private schools was "undemocratic" ! Undemocratic for a father to pay for his child's education! Perhaps the Catholics can give an opiriiori'on that point whicn will surprise. the. Commissioner who rebuked Mr. Brandon. Our education system—of free, secular, com-, pulsory education—has been criticised because it.isndt free (because it costs somebody, pearly a million a year), not jseCular'.(because it rscognises the> existence*of■ Gob), not compulsory (becauseVa child is not bound to attend the State school), and, most important of all, because it is not education. This is sweeping, but it has truth in it.- We have only been considering the fourth point, and wo are'sorry that tho Commission in its examination of witnesses, does not appear to have devoted much attention to it. Yci it was only by concentrating upon the question whether the .primary "education; , provided by tho Stafci really is education—in itself, and in its relation to the technical schools— that the Commission could have laid the foundation for .a really useful report. Unlessihe press reports havj done grave injustice to the career of the Commission, the report that is to come will—except, perhaps, in th? matter of finance—be ■ more curious' than_ useful. All that can be hoped for is; that the Hon. James Allen will be presented with good 'reason-i why he 'could and should save a large sum of,money hitherto wasted by the Department, in the name 'of education, upon frills, red-tape, and mismanagement. . ' •