ENVIRONMENT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 21 January 1931, Page 8

ENVIRONMENT

EDUCATING THE CHILD SERMON TO TEACHERS BY BISHOP WEST*WATSON The education of the child and the part that adaptation to environment has to play in that education was the subject of a sermon given by Bishop WestWalson in the Anglican Cathedral, Christchurch, reports the “Press.” In it he emphasised the importance of the complete education of the child—the physical, mental, and spiritual sides—and the present-day danger of merely encouraging mass production in education rather than developing individual personality and giving if ability to face the examination of life without reliance ou the mass for its own individual thought. _ i The occasion was I lie church parade of school teachers who are attending the Summer School being held in Christchurch at present. There was a very large attendance. The Bishop, who took his text front I he Gospel according to St. John, Chapter 14, the sixth verse. “I am the Way, (he Truth, and the Light,” explained that lie wished to treat the subject oi adaptation to environment, the adaptation, that was, of our methods and outlook to the constitution and nature of (,1m child. In the past, he maintained the tendency had been to adapt the child to its" environment of curriculum and system. CHANGING THE OUTLOOK “We arc to-day trying to escape from that outlook and practice,” he. continued, “and the essential factor in the success or otherwise of that attempt lies in the mental and moral training and development of the teachers. “The environment of the child’s naturo itself is made up oi three components. The first is the physical. In regard to that section we are fully awake. \V« have made great progress in lho teaching of hygiene. Our open-air school system is being developed. Wo are expanding the facilities for medical attention. Wo value exercise and games, and they play an important part in all curricula. So long as all this does not become an end in itself it is excellent, and it is definite that the healthy body has a great effect on the healthy mind. “The second component is the mental environment. Of Ibis, 100, we havo learned much, and although our study of this aspect has not yet reached finality there are two things which seem clear. The first is that the child is not a- slate on which wo write if wo can got it to slay still, hut it: is a bundle of actions and reactions, impulses, and capacities. The second is that the child is a growing personality, and ils development is not fixed or inevitable. . It is subject to influence and direction, often resentful of authority, but almost always open to friendship and sympathy.

MASS PRODUCTION INADEQUATE

"It is discoveries such as these which arc revolutionising our conception of ii teacher, and are making heavy demands on the whole personality of a teacher. The sense of vocation becomes more urgent, the training of the individual is the supreme art, and mere mass production is inadequate. The mass production system produces types, not individuals, and tends to lower, instead of raise, the progressive powers of society, for everyone tends to depend on others for opinions or ideals. YVo can review the Victorian age. VVliate.vm wrongs and evils it. embodied of other types, it was alive with a, wealth of personalities, while to-day our education, like other departments of life, is along the lines of mass production. “The true teacher may have to train tho minds (if pupils for fixed tests and examinations, but he will bo aware that it is not the-ideal, and that in mental as m physical matters, one man’s food may ho another man’s poison, lid will prize most of all the way in which Ins pupils face the examination of life itself with judgment, wise thought, and decision.

EDUCATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY “Some may lie apt to slop there as if we had exhausted the environment, or at any rate our educational responsibility towards it. What 1 claim is that wo cannot. There is something more, and that, for want of a better word, I must call (he spiritual environment. There are those who would tell us that what wo mistake for our spiritual natures is a creation of our own, in response to some biological necessity. Such an explanation scorns to trifle with facts. Whether we look at the lives of men who have raised humanity—saints, poets, artists, idealists --or whether wo look within our own hearts, it is these qualities which are real, if any are. More than that, they are not only real, but dominant. We cannot separate them and treat them as a separate or optional department. They make or mar the whole. We may build the ship well, and load it perfectly, but unless it has a course to steer ami a hand at the helm it is labour lost. The pathos of the situation is that so many who start bravely and hopefully, either fail to endure, or have no set purpose to unify their lives, or fall prey lo follies and delusions. ONE GOVERNING FACTOR. ‘The true teacher cannot neglect lhis part of the environment in which he has to work. Rather it must govern all his work. Even if he be restricted and limited in definite teaching on the subject, his own personality has an impact on the personalities of Lis pupils, and the development of his own spiritual nature becomes of prime importance. If he is dilettante, or a mere official his pupils will feel it or suffer. If lie is possessed of a great ideal, a great purpose, a great devotion, his pupils will feel that life is a great thing to bo lived greatly. “Here it is that wo come face to face with God, as we seek some ideal, some purpose, some devotion big enough to unify our discordant lives. In Him our sense, of values—of goodness, beauty and truth find their answer. Those lamps in our spirit sky were not lit by more chance or emergence, and apart from God we seek we know not wlmt. Life is sacred, and nothing that is common or unclean is worth doing. All this is no vague idealism either, and it is the answer to mail’s noblest hopes. Wo wonder perhaps sometimes. But in centuries past men wondered. There was so much that they feared proved untrue, and so much that they had hardly dared to hope proved true. God as revealed by Christ was real, lie was entirely at home in the spiritual world and Tie was so entirely at home in this world —His Father’s garden. Ilis was the personality of personalities. CHRISTIANITY'S OFFER “Christianity offers guidance and offers us also a cross, and in offering it admit.s us to one of the inmost mysteries of life. The pain of life is at our hearts, and Christianity provides the someone to share it. Creation is a

great adventure of love victorious through suffering. We are adapting ourselves to the mental and physical environment. What of the spiritual?” His Lordship concluded with an appeal lo teachers to aim at perfect service for each environment, maintaining that it not, only provided for the teacher's individual needs, luit it gave to the pupil a message, an attitude, and an inspiration which would help him to face life, not as a self-centred or desultory adventure, but as a stern, but glorious effort, lived in fellowship with God for the service of man.