FACTS THE MAIN THING

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 16, 12 October 1937, Page 4

FACTS THE MAIN THING

1 am not much of an optimist about tho results to be obtalned from education. I value the results highly, but I do not shfire the enthusiaam of those who believe that, if this or that educational system were adopted. we should soon be marching rapidly towards a William Morris Utopia, writes Mr. Robert Lynd in the Schoolmaster. I do not believe that human beings would grow up more intelligent or humane if the teaching of Letin and Greek were abolished. I do not think that, if tho examination syfltein wero scrapped^ young men would as a consequence leave the university with finer or freer minds than the young men of today. I do not believe that," if every school were turned into a Liberty fijall. tho emergencO of a race of happicr or nobler human boings would be tho inovitablo sequel. The chief object of education is; I suppose, to provide the young human being with the instruments for acquiring knowledge and arranging it intelligentlyj and there is much to be said for the view that both the examination system and the teaching of Latin have helped in this. Exiaminers, being human( have made countless blunders, and may even on occasions have hampered a promising career through their misjudgments. but, on the whole the examination system does encourage the acquiBition of knowledge and the orderly and laccurate arrangement of knowledge. It is not a test of genius, nor ought it to be sO. At most, it is a test of a well-stored and well-disciplined brain. Every subject should, to my mind, be taught in such a way as to encounage exactness about facts and intelligence in the arrangement of facts and In discovering relations between oue fact and another. While concent.mtirig on facts, the good tceichor cotild always infcct his pupils with his own enthusiasm for the | great things. in literature and lif«r "