EDUCATION OR INFORMATION?

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 193, 1 September 1937, Page 4

EDUCATION OR INFORMATION?

" The extension of knowledge and science in our day has been such that there is a very great temptation in our schools merely to impart information. Knowledge, however, is an inferior article as compared in value with the human soul," says General Smuts, in " Education Adaptations in a Changing Society." , " Education should rely on the development much more of the imagination than of the memory. The new conditions of society call for such a change. The field of knowledge is widening at such an enormous rate that it is a sin to expect a child to memorise this vast body of facts. He should be taught the use of reference books even to the extent of their use in the examination room. " If I were a D'ictator, I would lay down as a pi'Ogramme of principles for the New Education: The building up of individual personality ; the encouragement of imagination, not of memory; the feeding of the young mind with interests, ideals, and the joy of life, avoiding repressions; the cultivating of a love of truth, a broad outlook, and ohjectiveness; a thorough grounding in fundamentals, leaving details to reference books; and the principles of Holism — that in this univcrse we are all members one of another, and t ialfishness is the refusal and deuial of life."