Education Reform

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 85, 27 April 1937, Page 14

Education Reform

• Tplpsrnph Pre*» Assoolation.l

SYSTEM'S DEFECTS Curriculum Reform Vital Necessity DR. W. M. SMITH'S VIEWS

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PALMEHSTON N. This Day. "Education is a subject on which we know very little; nobody can claim to spealt with- any great authority about it. But the same might be said about inany other subjects, and if we are to take up a defeatist attitude, we might as well give up all attempts to reform a topsy-turvy world," stated Dr. W. M. Smith in an address to the Palmerston North Rotarv Club yesterday. After pointing out .that we should not expect too much from education or anything else, Dr. Smith touched briefly on certain facts about the history of education. Out of the Reformation and developments ' in the 17th century, he stated, there had grown up a system aiming at turning out English gentlemen, with a knowledge of religious, cultural and certain utilitarian subjects. By the 19th century there were some aew developments with the growth of :ommerce, making necessary the teachng of foreign languages, while on the ;echnical side advances were made in :he direetion of chemistry and physics; Chen in 1870 there had been an Act to provide education for the mass of the people; one *urrent had been humanitarian, but the most powerful — and ihe jne that had carried the Act — was to be found in the fact that, if a man could not read, write and calculate, he Was not much use. Since then there had been mainly a development of seeondary education, but a great deal of the gentlemanly curriculum still remained in the ordinary secondary school designed not for the education of English gentlemen, but • for ordinary people. The curriculum had become somewhat artificial and meaningless, and had remained too wide to bo tackled by the average individual. Responsibility Without Power. The most important elements in education were the teacher and the curriculum. Of course, the pupil was very important. but he had no time to deaL with that in a, short address. Thej teacher was one of the supremej examples of responsibility without | power; he had little control over whatj he taught or how he t&ught it. He was a great example of a prof essional man taking orders from outside the profession and from within the profession from those who were not competent to give those orders. That was one of the grave defects in the inspectorate system in New Zealand. The syllabus was, to a large extent, dominated by oiitside bodies. Organisa- ' tions such as the medical, legal and accountancy professions had been enabled, in . the course of a . long conspiracy with the university, to domi,nate what a boy should do in school,1 although what he did there had no relation to what he would do in that profession. In order to become a doctor, a boy had to learn Latin and Freneh, while if he wanted to be a law- . yer he had to learn Latin. If it was necessary to know Latin, it was far more necessary to know Greek. But leaving that aside, we had a course of atudies preseribed for certain professional examinations which bore no relation to what the boy should be doing* to develop intelligently his powers for that profession. The curriculum had become highly formalised. A boy came to grips with a foreign language that he never needed to use. The educational hierarchy 'decreed that there should be examinations to test what the boy had learned, and on the results of those examinations the teacher 's work was tested. Not only was an endeavour being made to teach too much, but it also was being done in the wrong way. The teacher was fastened down by an altogether fraudulent examination system. If the teacher was preoccupied with teaching what he thought would be in the examination paper, so th'at the boy would pass ahd the educational hierarchy might see that the teacher was a good one, he would not be able to develop what was in the boy. The speaker j thought that the way in which the teachers had been able to work was fniraculous, and the number of bovs who had achieved success under this meaningless system was rcmarkahle and i a tribute to their teachers. The Aim of Education. "What are we aiming at in education?" Dr. Smith asked. "A great deal of nonsense has bceii talked about edu- | cational aims, and more people have j beeu seut to sleep by talking about edu- j cutioa than anytliing else. We are tohi i that education should teach hcaracter j and give the boys the power to stick, i but ther6 are so iuany things that they are supposed to stick at that I am amazed that they are able to stick at anytliing. Then we ars told that education must train the mind. If you are going to become a parson, you mav study Hebrew, but if you are not, leavn something thafc will be of use to you. ' Then we are told that the rising geueration is to be trained to think. Voe to anyone who tries to think I Bernard Shaw was fight when he said the average individual would rather die than think. Then we try to train them to swallow the reasons we give them for what we wish them to believe and for what we have accepted iu the past." Another element was tlxat education had a competitive character, the fundamental evil of which was that people wero trained to beat each other. Thero would npver be spiritual i'ellowship until tbat were got rid oL Education should aim at social equality and economic democracy. One of the reasons for incompetence and muddling in the world was backstairs manoeuvrbig — getting someone pitehforked into a job for which he was not ^ualiiied. la our social system there,

was too much of the baekstairs system,; instead of readiness to recognise talent! where we found it. One of the most important aspects of education was radio, but a lack of vital enterprise was evident in this direetion. The idea of those responsible for tho [programmes seemed to be to give the : I common man what the common' man wanted, and the result was that it took a common man to appreeiate it. Was it necessary to have drivelling chit-chat interspersed with second-rato ' gramophone records? What was needed in the radio was something living. He did not mean some prosy estimate by a parson of our prospects of eternal bliss, but something that would quicken and hasten us and make us live and not send usi to sleep. We needed radio as the instrument of democracy — in this sense, that a man should be compeiled • to listen to things with which he did •not agree. "I don't think there is any principle ,more living, vital and more full o£ spiritual worth than the principl6 of true democracy. Only to the extent that we tolerate the other point of view can we claim to b6 a democratio civilisation. I hope the ' education of the future will be devoted more to bringing education into the needs of human life. Education goes so far and stops, and then what has been achieved is thrown overboard because it is imperfect. If we have no vision, we shaJl. perish. The thought I want to leave with you," Dr. Smith concluded, Vis that education must be brought more directly into life, and once reform of the curriculum is obtained, the teacher must be giveu more freedom to wovk out that curriculum than has been tb, case in the past." Dr. Smith was accorded tho club thanlcs on the inotion of Rotarlan L Bary.