EDUCATION METHODS. An Imperfect System.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 70, 2 November 1901, Page 8

EDUCATION METHODS. An Imperfect System.

THE current definition of education seems to imply the cramming of the three R's into childish brains, with, perhaps, a smattering of science (save the mark) and general (very general) knowledge. What, then, is this "Art of developing the various physical, intellectual, aesthetic, and moral qualities? Perhaps, over education. The child who can do stocks and decimals, spell long words, and all the rest of it, is considered by his fond parents to have an education fitting him for— what? Well, a clerk, or something of the kind. • • • The promising Johnny wastes a couple of years m the seventh standard, and becomes perhaps cashier in a small business, or polishes a chair in the "Big Building.'' Perhaps, he may impart the three It's, to a new generation. Anyhow, his training has quite unfitted him for other pursuits If he feels inclined to follow a trade, our beneficent labour laws r>ut every obstacle in the way of his soiling his hands. Upholders of the present system tell us that the aim of true education is not the imparting of special technical knowledge, but the training of all the faculties to enable a man to perform his dutles of what kind soever well. • » ♦ Then, why make a specialty of subjects useful principally to clerks and the present-day school teachers? By all means teach the three R's, but not to the practical exclusion of equally useful technical knowledge. The average child commences school at five years of age. At the end of two years he will have learned the whole alphabet, very simple addition, a string of automatic tables, and a jingle of rhymes. Six years later he passes the sixth standard, is able to read and write fairly well, and to calculate to further orders. Eight years is a big slice of the thirty-three years of average humanity to offer up at the altar of learning. • • • If the inkslinger and the dominie are to get their respective training at the State expense, why not the skilled mechanic and artisan? The modern schools turn out a nation of clerks, shopkeepers, and pedagoges, while the wealth-pi oducing mechanic is merely a happy accident, and a rare accident at that. The unnaturalncs,s of present educational methods argues for drastic alteration. Fancy chaining an average healthy boy or girl to a desk for several hours a day to cram a mass of hard grad-gnnd facts ' about nothing in particular into his juvenile brain' The very soul of the youngster rises up in revolt against the tyranny • * • What is needed is that practical technical knowledge should be taught in conjunction with the three R's fiom the primer classes up, crystallising towards the last into the form of some special trade, according to the inclination and fitness of the learner. Let the girls, from the youngest to the eldest, be taught sewing, cooking, and household duties Housekeeping would become a fine art, and the servant-girl question a problem no longer The boys should be taught the accurate use of hand and eye preparatory to special technical training before entering the arena of industrial warfare. It is not expected that the present parsimonious system of payment of teachers would produce proper results, but the increased national wealth attending the altered methods of education would full}' compensate for the increased outlay.