The Dominion. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1913. MAKING MEN.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1848, 6 September 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1913. MAKING MEN.

The President of the Secondary School Teachers' Association (Mn. A. Heine) had some very, interesting things to say in the paper on "Old and New Methods of Education," read at the Association's annual meeting on Thursday. _ Many close observers aro of opinion that our national character is losing some of those elements which go to make a strong and self-reliant people with a keen sense' of duty. We are getting soft and are inclined to avoid difficulties rather than to overcome them, and the spirit of discipline is being displaced by a tendency to coddle and to make life one longholiday. Exertion, except as a form of recreation, js becoming decidedly unpopular, and there is a growing disposition to regard real work as ■a neccssary evil. If, as we are told, the boy is father of the man, then it is only natural that wo should look for the seeds of this mental and moral enervation in our methods of education; and Mr. Heine places his finger on the weak spot when he calls attention to the fact that "tho cry of modern educationists is 'that gentleness, diversion, amusement, and sympathy should take the place of the sterner and severer methods of the days of our youth." : All these things are good in proper place, but it requires sterner stuff to build up the strong and robust characters without which no nation ever was or ever will be great. If the school is to be a preparation for real life, then the pupil should learn something of the meaning of discipline, effort, disappointment, and suffering, for these things must play a big part in his daily existence, no matter how he may try to escape 1 thcra. Though life may have its drawbacks, the modern man is not prepared to say that Of all the dreams of bliss that are, Not to bo born is best by far; i Next best, by far the next, for man To speed as fast as speed ho can, , Soon as his eyes have glanced on earth To u'liere lie was before his birth. 1 Most of us are glad we were born, > and desire to live as'long as we can; ■ but we want our lives to be soft, • easy, and pleasant. Duty and dis- [ ciplino will continue to be out of t fashion until our schools return to what Mit. Heine describes as-"the sterner and severer training of former days." I The old system no doubt had many features that have rightly been discarded. Its severity was sometimes • scarccly distinguishable from brutal- > jt v; but- we have also abandoned ; much that might well have been re- ' tained. The schoolmaster's work is to make men, and boys are not going to be turned into men of the right stamp by the coddling process. At oqo timo corporal punishment woa a rooasuisfid part of the ordinary.

school routine, and, as Mh- Eenner said at the teachers' meeting, "a jolly good licking might bo the making of a boy"; but nowadays many people think it is a crime for a teacher to thrash a pupil. Not long ago an English Admiral made the statement that when ho was at school he was caned every Monday morning, and he added: "AVo were proud of it, and should have been ashamed to complain of such a tiling." There may have been a playful touch of exaggeration about the remark, but it shows that healthyminded boys do not regard corporal punishment as degrading, and it is a good thing to-teach them in a practical way that punishment is the other half of wrongdoing. We may refuse to recognise this truth in the home, in the school, and in our social relationships; but Nature will have her revenge in the long run, for the moral virility of the nation must eventually be weakened. A distinguished educationist has stated that "to educate children is to endeavour to make.men of them, to cultivate and develop those faculties which -they will find necessary in adult practical life." It is, of course, necessary that they should learn to read well and to write clearly, and that they should have a practical knowledge of the use of figures; but the great thing is character—the making of good citizens. The true teacher ought to be able to say of his pupils:

I have taught tliem in the way of wisdom; I have led them in the paths of uprightness.

He can never be satisfied with less than this if he is to "make men." Character may not_ count _ for so much as cleverness in examinations, but it counts tremendously in life. How is it, many thoughtful people are asking, that our system of versal education is not having a more potent influence in the strengthening of the character of the nation 1 A knowledge of the three "It's" is very useful, but it does not necessarily "make a man." Something more is needed, and that is effective moral power. Here the school systems of the present day appear to be weak. In his book, entitled "Modern Views on Education," De. Thxselton Mark quotes the opinions on thi§ point of a French writer, M. Devolve, who has recently published the results of an' inquiry into the effects of what is known as "lay moral instruction" in ■France as compared with the earlier traditional religious instruction. He declares that the dynamic effect of the new teaching upon the moral nature of the scholars is inadequate, because it fails to attach itself to any "living centre" within the child's nature, "around which the elements of the moral life group themselves, as it were, spontaneously, as an organism develops from an original central germ." The traditional religious teaching had such an organic centre. Dr. Mark states that there is ample British testimony -to confirm this view. In view of these facts it is encouraging to notice that Mn. Heine gave such prominence in his paper at the Secondary School Teachers' meeting to tho charactermaking aspect of education. He rightly declared that "the ultimate aim of all education is to build up character, to make children strong, mentally and morally, and not merely to impart a certain amount of knowledge." • Anything less than this does not deserve tho name of .education, but the term is too often made .to .cover'methods which fall far short of Mr. Heine's,ideal. "My education was interrupted by my schooling," says Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is a severe gibe, but unfortunately it finds a good deal of justification in the narrow and poverty-stricken idea which some people have of the work of a teacher. ■