SCHOOL IDEALS AND METHODS.

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2776, 20 May 1916, Page 7

SCHOOL IDEALS AND METHODS.

Sir,—ln yo»r- leader under the above heading in to-day's .Dominion you say: "The opinion is widely held that there is something fundamentally, wiong with our educational methods. They must be reconsidered and remodelled." In this new country of New Zealand we find the population tending to aggregate more ami more in' the towns, and more and more in what are called commercial pursuits. Our technical schools and colleges are filled with young people, not seeking better to tit themselves for work on the laud or in the. workshop, but in the office and at the desk. Our lads' and girls now despise industrial work— they want to keep their hands clean and write in a book at a desk all day long. This condition of things' is bad enough in an old country, but in a new it is disastrous. No doubt there, are many reasons whyfacts are as they are. But one great reason is our erroneous school ideal. As Sir Henry Armstrong pointed out many years,ago, our present educational system is the direct descendant of the "'"bookish" system in vogue in the Middle Ages, the object of which was to train a few of tho lads to be clerics, lawyers, and such like. In our innocence, we think that the same kind of system is the right one for the training of the mass of tho lads to earn their living with their hands. The. reductio ad absurduni is reached when we uive the samo-system-for the training of the mass of our girls. The natural lifo for a woman is to be a wife and a mother, yet, ill our current educational system, we train our girls to be clerks, typistes, school teaehors/and only incidentally give them any education in those things which every wife and mother ought to know for her own well-being and that of tho State. Someone lias said , tiiat we here in Ne-w Zealand are training all our lads for the post of Prime Minister, It seems pretty certain that the majority of our unthinking State school products believe that they' could govern the country far botter than it is governed new. l!ut only ono man at a time can be Prime Minister, and we need vast numbers of fanners and workers if the country is to develop properly. Tho trouble is that in times past wo have had no clearness of vision in educational matters, but have been content to muddle along, hoping things would come right. Germany started to prepare for this war one hundred years ago, when she remodelled her educational system. Siuce then she has trained the mass of her people to be workers and doers, to do what they were told by those in authority, and the few to be leaders and governors. And the result—a nation organised as a whole for war, and determined with one mind to win, and prepared for any sacrifice to achieve their end.

In a new country, the essential thing is that every lad should he taught first of all to use his hands and eyes—that from the very first his education should centre round real things, and not roiiiiid books and pen and paper. Jf you put a boy for five hours a day for five days a week for five of the most impressionable years of his life at a desk to sit and sum and read and write, what wonder is it if after that time all he wants to do is to sit at a desk all day and read and write and sum. And so with the girls. Our girls must be trained first of all to use their hands and eyes, to do housework, sewing and cookery, find should l;now definitely the care of their own body,' and of the little ones that will one day come to them. Our children must be trained from the first with concrete things; the very littlo ones must bo taught on Kindergarten or Montessori* metlmds, and "this same method learning by doing must bo carried right up tho educational ladder. Wo must aim at turning out mainly workers and {loci's, not mainly talkers anil writers—l am, etc , H. 11. ROB.TOHNS, B.Sc., Formerly Director of Modern Instruction, Cheltenham, Rnglaud.