MODERN EDUCATION

Hokitika Guardian, 17 May 1930, Page 2

MODERN EDUCATION

PE VIEW BY PROFESSOR SHELLEY.

WELLINGTON, May 14

“The home has departed from the Central position in tlie social organisation. Education has taken up the position.” Such were the views which Professor J. Shelley, of Canterbury College, expressed to a crowded lectureroom at Victoria College last night. Ho declared that New Zealand education was too mechanical, and that instead the child should be taught in the terms of its own experience. “Education is the most important institution in the world, not excluding the family, which has foregone its right to the central place in the social organisation,” said Professor Shelley. .“Tlie family could be more uneful than it is The husband and wife now go to the talkies and the woman now has perhaps one ‘at home’ a week. The people who talked about the sancity of the home were the ones who bought an eighth of an acre section, when they could have had a larger one, build a house, and get a couple of car. Then, the centre of that home would be the

garage.” ' Educationalists insisted that education must constitute the centre of the social organisation.' Some people looked to the churches, ■ but" could see no' hope for the presbut time there. As for commerce, “the beastly mess the commercial world is in” gave no hope for that. •• *

VOCATIONAL EDUCATION.

Protesting against vocational education for the masses, Professor Shelley asked why. children shold spend seven o reight years at school to fit them to tend machines. In New Zealand there was per cent mentally deficient, but 20 per cent, of the jobs could be filled by mental defectives,, and in England, the number was greater still. He knew that there were a few jobs at the top which .needed a specialised training. Industry had not solved the social problem, by its very efficiency it had done the opposite..

TRADE RETURNS

“Beware of looking at a country by the import and export returns,” he said “If wh Wd a few men with enough brains'tp organise all on technical lines, the exports would-go up, but we would not remain human beings.”

TOO- MECHANICAL,

Compared with other countries, for example,^England, education in. New Zealand i?s much too .mechanical. He would liajher .see children working away with theijStone tools of prehistoric man, and trying to create something, than sharpening hardened steel tools.

WHAT IS NEEDED

Wha£ we wanted was a “child village” wh<pe the children cold engage in all the pursuits usual to their age, and also learn all about nature —a place where tfiey learned to grow and build things for themselves, There they could carry out for themselves the things which human beings had done in the past. ■

The l,arge numbers of youths in gaol at the present time had been robbed of the satisfaction of desire in terms of adventure.; ! The child did not get any adventure in running messages.

THE GROUP SYSTEM

The child had no adequate training for citizenship. To take the social organisation from the adult setting, and put it in paragraphs in a book was not going to develop the child. He should be put in groups, so that he could think of things in terms of actual life. The most serious gap in society was the adolescent gap. Up to the age of 13 and 14 the child was concerned with the school and the teacher. After, his home and, his wife. Between those two points was the gap, in which he got a job andihpceived pay. What was wanted was ‘place where children could go while waiting for a position where they could be. taught the arts and crafts, instead of .' having the present passive desk edu'cjiteion.