FAULT IN SCHOOLS

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 17 June 1933, Page 11

FAULT IN SCHOOLS

Mass Production Warning - , ; TX’ a recent address Mr H. Ramsbotham, Par- ,-j -*• liamentary Secretary to the British Board of Education', said that if our educational system tended to suppress individuality we should only be imitating in the schools the mass production of the factories. Patterns did not create progress, drill was not discipline, and the step that was kept by everyone was the goosestep. We were much at the mercy of the new spirit. Originality, unconventionally, freedom, , and independence of thought were not really popular, and perhaps less popular in school than in the world outside. He was inclined to think that we gave too much attention in education to events and thoughts now obsolete and dead. History was being ruined by the specialist, and so also were the classics. If half the time were devoted to the present which was squandered upon details of the past ■we should be a better informed race and fitted to deal with the problems of to-day. Democracy could only work well in a State when the great majority understood its method of operation, its difficulties, its numerous checks and counterchecks. If the working of our institutions was not understood by the masses they would become indifferent to the fate of those institutions and the opportunity of democracy’s opponents might draw nearer. If children were to be fit to live with in a democracy they must be taught a good deal about democratic government.