AMERICAN EDUCATION

Hokitika Guardian, 7 March 1930, Page 3

AMERICAN EDUCATION

CULTURE MINUS RESTRAINT,

SAN FRANCiSi O, January 25

In one of the most drastic reforms ever advocated for tiie American edue.i tional system, Professor Daniel E. /hillips, widely-known psychologist of he Unnersitv of Denver, would smash the very foundation of “higher education.” He would banish athletics, fraternities, sororities, tuition fees, examinations, grades and all degrees in a “new type” university. There would be no requirements on entrance or a diploma on leaving school. “The flapv:er, the loafer, the sport and the idle ■•ich” would he barred from Professor b’hillips’ new institution of learning. Tradition would be .swept aside, an entirely new regime would be substituted, and the contemporary inter-relat- ; nnsbip of students and faculty would be abolished.

Professor Phillips spares ho one in bis verbal broadside. Faculty and students in general, under the current system of education, are attacked. Both Pij'ifes'-vr PfWHiips indicates, are as Iteinb'ss as tlie present “higher educational” arrangement. “I am w>t • t this time attempting to patch up a rotten ship” he asserts. “1 propose Dm building of a new ship.” Professor Phillips would discard th" traditional four-year college term, and Dye student would act entirely, unon bis own volition, in the pursuit- of educa--tion. “In such an institution ns I propose there would lie no entrance requirement,” he says, “Anyone above fhe age .of 16 could enter and pursue any course he is able to take with profit to himself.’,’ He says there are thousands of students in America who long for such an opportunity of pursuing culture untrammelled by restraint or compulsion.

SAVANT FLAYS SYSTEM

That American private schools are potential breeders of destruction to the State and tlie 20,003 public high schools in the American nation are wasting millions of the taxpayers’ money on an ineffective system of education is the belief of Dr. Thomas H. Briggs, of Columbia FDiversity.

After four years of work most high school graduates have neither culture nor preparation for life, lie said, because of the “wastefully continued effort to make academic scholars of ah or even a majority of the students.” “Far‘too often education comes to be considered something under compulsion and constant direction, instead of some thing ' that continues unendingly to make life more interesting and more intelligible.’.’

Mrs Beatrice Ensor is convinced that the system of examination in use the world over -should lie revised. Mrs Ensor is an educator of international fame, tlie organiser of two large schools in England, editor of the “New Era,” which is a magazine published in London and devoted to educational problems, and is chairman of the New Education Fellowship, which is composed of leading educators in the principal countries of the world interested in revising the present system of education.

LESSONS FROM ENGLAND,

Schools try to standardise children, cram their heads full of facts which Five no definite relation to the child’s life or talents. Mrs Ensor believes. She explained: “We have for years been running our schools by bells. A few minutes for arithmetic, a few more f'>r spelling, and a certain amount for literature. There has been no plan of combining these studies to make for-a definite object. Just a few series of facts we have been cramming into our children's heads. We want them to know facts, of course, hut most of all wo must develop their indiviual talents D, them to live best their individual lives.

“W<> must do awav with any effort towards standardisation. We must be •’lost concerned with the individual Coloo+q (>f oocli eh’ld. develop those tclm+s of the child, develop the children and try not to make children eonform to the rdan of schools. Our system of evaminations is wrong.” she added. “Wo should not expect, every child to q ci,n oni-po standard in all sub- : co+s Dim child talented in aritlimof.'c does not. necessarily need to he UiMUii'fint in spelling.”