"IDEALS OF EDUCATION."

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1862, 23 September 1913, Page 6

"IDEALS OF EDUCATION."

'A LECTURE TO TEACHERS. <

Under tho auspices of tho WalrarapS Branch of tho Teachers' Institute, Mr. F. H. Bakewell, M.A., Inspector of Schools, delivered a lecturo in tlio Tech'nical School, Mastorton, last Saturday afternoon, to an audience of over ninety teachora. Mr. F, L. Combs, president of tho branch, wbb in the ohair. > Mr. Bakewell first sketched the ideal of education which prevailed among the Greeks, and then paßscd on to the ' sternor and more strenuouß system that was necesßary to. Beoure the Roman ideal. The monaßtio idea, the "empty vessel," and the modern '"plant" idea were lucidly explained and compared. The latter was tho education of Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbert, and Spencer, l and was the cultivation and development of the inborn self-activities of tho child. Tho Montesßon lystom was tho highest development of this ideal. . In, conclusion, Mr. Bakewell ooula think of no educational ideal that would help a teacher in a town' school to teach a class of seventy children, nor 0110 that would help a baok-block teacher in an environment of logs, btnmps, and mud, who had to teach fourteen or fifteen sijhjects to Bis standards and threo classes of infants. In faot, they were directly antagonistic to an ideal of any kind. ' But lie might well question teachers working under such conditions as to what ideal or aim they wero striving for. Was it tho Greek, the Roman, tho diabolical idea, tho plant ideaP Or wero they just striving to get through with tho minimum trouble to themselves and without any particular aim or ideal of any kind? To tho lecturer's mind, no matter what tho.unsatisfactory circumstances and environment of a teacher might be, the carrying out pf an ideafwas possible.