PRIMARY SCHOOLS SYLLABUS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 59, 7 September 1926, Page 11

PRIMARY SCHOOLS SYLLABUS

NEED FOB BEVISION.

The desirability of revising the primary BChool syllabus was referred to in the annual report of the Chief Inspector of School (Mr. T. B. Strong), in his annual report, presented in the House of Eepresentatives yesterday. It could be enriched, he stated, not only in the direction of utilising more freely training in handwork, but also by giving a stronger bias towards the study of English literature and towards the more practical side of elementary mathematics. "Facility in English composition, both oral and written," said Mr. Strong, "has greatly increased in recent years, and teachers now secure as well-written composition in Standard 11. as was in former years thought possible only in Standard IV. Thero was a time when the syllabus specified six I sentences in composition for a Standard ITT. lesson. Our pupils in the higher infants' classes far exceed this allowance. At the same time there is no doubt that too much attention is being paid to the mechanical aspects of the teaching of English. Grammar has, in my opinion, far more than its rightful share of attention, and much time is still being wasted on the spelling of difficult words, words^that are not in the least, likely to enter the child's vocabulary for several years. More attention should be paid to good English literature in order that pupils, before they leave the primary schools, may be imbued with an appreciation of, and a love for, some of the finer'work of our best authors. Time for this broader study of English can also be secured by reducing the amount of time usually allotted to arithmetic. This subject has been overdone in the past, and is still being overdone. It is, indeed, not too much to say that with many teachers it is the principal subject in the curriculum. Wo have already jettisoned a great deal of useless work in arithmetic, and I think there is still some lumber to be got rid of. The arithmetic taught in the primary schools is not a disciplinary subject, nor does it enable a child to develop a faculty for overcoming the financial difficulties he may meet with in afterlife. Its content should, however, be closely related to life needs. Eeal life situations provide abundant material for even the most ardent arithmetician, and I think that in this direction the scope of the subject should bo widened to include those simple practical problems in geometry that most men and women/ meet with in some shape or form. ; "If the primary syllabus were modified along these lines—that is, in the direction of utilising more fully the handwork and manual training subjects in the direction of making the arithmetic more, practical and more suited to everyday needs, and in the direction of widening the study of English—l think the primary schools would themselves advance a long way towards gaining some of the advantages which the junior high school is intended to provide."