WHAT TEACHER MAY TEACH

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 152, 23 March 1939, Page 13

WHAT TEACHER MAY TEACH

1111 . ▼ . View Of College Principal WIDENING OF FIELD URGED The duties of teachers, the limitations imposed on their work either by Statute or by convention, and what they should teach and what they should not teach were dealt with last night by Mr. F. M. Renner, headmaster of Rongotai College, in his address at the annual meeting of the Rongotai College Parents’ Association. “The conception of a teacher’s life, and the measure of what he shall or shall not contribute to the thoughts and Ideals and policy of his country, makes it difficult for him to, live a complete life even in the British democracies; and yet a teacher’s position in a democracy is important, however much convention or law or custom may bid him stand aside from any intelligent participation in making his contribution to democracy,” said Mr. Renner. “I thnk the time has come when the teacher’s position in relation not only to his pupils but to the community as a whole must be revised. In our secondary schools if not in our universities, but certainly in our secondary schools, we tend to be too academic in our teaching. We orientate our teaching to enable success to be achieved in gaining certificates or passing examinations. We have been doing this for goodness knows how many years: but meantime the world has moved on at an astonishing rate: evolutionary and revolutionary changes are apparent in every department of life —but not in education. Modem Requirements. “I think it is time we realized that the boy of 16 years today requires to have learnt more and to have been taught more than a young man of 30 some 40 years ago, and I do not think it is right that we should send the present boy or girl of 16 years out into the complicated maze of present-day civilization -without giving either of them a fuller and wider knowledge to enable them to solve present-day problems. If now in our fifth and sixth forms the teacher were given greater freedom, if he could be freed from the restrictions imposed upon him by convention, by public opinion and by the examination system, he could be left to deal fully and frankly with many of our modern problems and so give the young people a reasonable outlook on what lies before them when they leave school. I do not see any reason why in the upper forms all sorts of questions dealing with religion, politics, economics, liinauce, should not be discussed. The children hear them discussed at home; I know they discuss them among themselves.

“It is, to my mind, preferable that they should do it under the wise guidance of their teacher. “I feel sure that lhe teacher can be trusted to use that freedom of thought and expression without abusing it. They are intelligent men and women and it is the intelligent man or woman who tan be trusted not to construe liberty as licence.”