EDUCATION

Hokitika Guardian, 10 May 1929, Page 3

EDUCATION

ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR

SHELLEY

CHRISTCHURCH, May 9

In a lecture in the Little Theatre yesterday morning Professor J. Shelley dealt trenchantly with the defects of the existing haol system of education. His address was given to kindergarten teachers and students from all parts of New Zealand as a part of the Christchurch Free Kindergarten Association’s refresher course. His subject was Education and the preschool child.”

It was no use trying, Jie said, to understand the education of the preschool child unless one understood the training of the’others. Each institution was liable to try to teach the child more than it ought. Some people prided themselves on the fact that their children could read at three or four years of age. This was horrible to the speaker’s mind, as it meant that, instead of gaining firsthand experience of life, the child would be filling out its life from the pages of a book.

“Tho heresy under which we have suffered since the Renascence is the heresy of laying too much stress on words.” continued Professor Shelley. He did not wiVh to decry the work of such n.s Mine Miontessori, but it was based on a wrong pliychology, and led to a confusion between what should bo called' education and what should be called learning. “This is a confusion natural in the minds of people who have ibeen to schools to be educated. Schools, so far from helping, education 1 lia ,Y>Oi often‘l>°an obstacles- in' it* w°v

“Much of tlie edrication of adolescent girls goes merely to create dis Harmony arid- lack of balance. Girls, after they have’ been to secondary schools; find’ themselves out of t'ion to' society, arid- unable to find themselves. Now, to' help in 'this should'be the real ditty- of- education.?' It was’ frequently said : that only if few people coiilcl- lie educated'. Certainly, the capacity for juggling' with abstract' thought was for only A-fCW ;- hut, if a- man was so tr&ined ! as' t'o> make the beat Use of tfliat capacities lie had. low thougli they were, lie couldlie said to be completely educated. “Unlearned?’ wa-4 not synonymous with “uneducated.” The school was often an instrument of learning, but not so often an instrument of - education, which the picture palace certainly was. The school was a consciously established institution to make up what deficiencies might exist in the child’s environment.“Real education comes to the child from interaction with Ins fellows and with the forces of nature. Reading and writing enable him to gain a little more education from the experiences of other people.”

The disharmonies of adult life were, continued the speaker, largely due to lack of experience of other people’s lives. 'Education should, mean the gaining of first-hand experience of human activity and of the make-up of human beings. But it was only out oi school that a child could do this. In school he could only perforin a series of exercises which bore no relation to the life of liis fellow' children and very often none to his own life. This separation of children one from the other in the classroom was possibly just the opposite of education. . “jf we gradually instil into the child mind the idea that it must beat othens wo are doing just the opposite to education. We are giving him a competitive outlook on life, and encouraging him to gain at the expense of others. He may ; bo more learned, more skilled, more able to injure others; hub he is not more educated. Real education means turning the child mind in the right direction.’’ During the Renascence the individual came into contact with a fairly comnlete scheme of life in which school played little or no part. The expressive side of life was dominant then —people sang and danced for themselves. Nowadays if people wanted singing they went to hear a voice which was paid a thousand pounds a uj edit to sing for them. This was not community expression, nor d d it encourage tiie growth of art in the community. “If you think for a minute how utterly devoid of means of expression is the' average child on leaving school, yni.i will see how far schooling is from education,” declared the speaker. “The hours of labour are being induced; hut, if we give the man no means of expressing himself m his leisure hours, then this added Insure will be an evil. As it is, he goes homo and says, ‘What shall f do 10-nignt; ' what’s on V And he goes .perhaps to see someone doing something for him or a screen. It jerks up liis emotions but it mve him no means of expressing them.” . . The method of education should be such as to make the child feel, "ot that he was doing some lesson 1 1 andedown from the past for him to do, tut that ho was doing something cieav.ve. He must face problems as if they were being done for Hie first time. Ihe word had to ho re-created in the mind of each new human being. It was harmful to give the child the idea tlu.t nothing was new and that everything had been done before. “The school ought to be a child community, where the child is brought into contact with everything that is going on in life. Modem icaching often prevents the school environment of the child from becoming a bring setting. You can’t learn things in isolation,. for there is no living relation between the experience and the thing itself. One thing that we find is that life is n whole—not split up into geography and history. If »

child is.set to doing intellectual cxer-r-i,se«, he may never come to realise that life is a real thing than can he felt intensely.” in conclusion. Professor Shelley ashed them to think of tlieir work as the cultivation of a creative attitude o mind Doing a thing was not essential an d to bring a child up to do everythin* successfully was the worst education a child could have. He should he made to feel that he was up against it all the time. . The speaker received a hear j vo of thanks.