SCHOOL CURRICULUM.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4308, 24 August 1921, Page 2

SCHOOL CURRICULUM.

APPLICATION OF ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE.

When addressing the Educational Institute- on Wednesday night the Director of Education (Mr J. Coughley) spoke of the place teachers tuight fill' in securing efficiency, and by way of practical illustration-referred ,to some of the common subjects jn .the school curriculum.

He pointed, out that in reecnt years New Zealand Jias abanxTaned the laborious formal writing in copybooks through the whole school course, the plan of measuring progress in arithmetic by tire number of sums right, the estimation of knowledge of history by the ability to re cite dates and facts which were sometimes of little value, and the repetition of strings of typographical! names as representing geography, but this was no reason why, as many teachers have done, we should go io the opp >- site extreme and accept mere scribble as writing, condone inaccuracy in arithmetic on the ground that the children were intelligent, leave children with a very scanty knowledge of the history of their own country, and very hazy ideas of the geography of the important countries of the world. To some extent we had gone from the extreme to didactic and bookish teaching to an excess of oral teaching. It was claimed that the children had very general inte'l’igence, but it must be remembered that intelligence could not act upon itself. It could only operate on facts, phenomena, and ideas, and of these there was an essential minimum amount of knowledge which the pupil musi carry in his own mind in an available and accurate form, and he must be able to" show a reasonable amount of technical skill and dexterity in the application .of this essential knowledge.