INSPECTORS CONFER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8353, 13 February 1913, Page 9

INSPECTORS CONFER

IDEALS OF EDUCATION INSPECTOR-GENERAL’S ADDRESS. Tho New Zealand School Inspectors’ Conference opened its triennial session in Parliament Buildings yesterday morning., under the presidency of Mr G. Hogbcn, Inspector-General of Schools. In his opening address, Sir Hogbcn said there would bo confusion if wo did not reshape our systems of education from time to time in accordance with our new ideals of life. The true reforms in helping to thrust out that which had grown old and out of accord with tho working ideals of tho present would seek for methods that were inspired by those ideals and were therefore in accord with them. He was not merely destructive. Hia most important work was constructive. What, he asked, for their purpose, was common to Naturalism and Idealism, .and what was tho difference between them? Ho would assume that the case of Idealism had been proved, but pointed out that as far as tho methods of education wore concerned . tho features common to modern Naturalism and modern Idealism would determine those methods. They were (a) the tendencies of modern science; (b) modern industrial activity; and (c) modern ideals of social relations. LIFE OF A CHILD. Tho life of a child was a pint of tho whole life of a man or woman. Tho powers of-the child were bis own, and they grow into powers of tho adult man just in so far as they were developed in a natural way, in a way that accorded both with external nature and with his own inner nature. .They could not by any merely internal system of discipline or instruction carry out a child’s self-development for him. They might help him to do so for himself, or, on the other hand, by mistaken methods chock and thwart, rr seriously warp, his self-development. They must endeavour to so guide a child that his early development" would be on sound lines. But one of their worst faults hitherto as educators was that in thpir false zeal to make what they regarded as substantial progress, they had tried to anticipate, so to speak, in the child the more matured product of adult manhood. No one in his senses would expect a boy of ten or twelve to jump twenty feet or to run a hundred yards in an even ten seconds. Yet how often even in progressive-—or, might wo say, enlightened?—New Zealand had they expected from the same boy an accuracy and skill in writing not far removed from the ready penmanship of the practiced clerk? ,They had Oven put into the hands of still younger children that barbarous instrument the steel pen, and had even punished them because their little fingers, being of a different shape and size, were not apt to hold the said instrument in the same position a s tho aforesaid adult practiced clerk. Nay, had they not sometimes whipped them, forsooth, because they had inked their poor dear little fingers ? Even adults could not always sit patiently and work for long periods in confined positions. They were all naturally nomads, and disliked imprisonment in any- form; but they ’cribbed and confined little children of five or six indoors in galleries or desks, and expected them to be good, and hoped mayhap—if they ever thought of it—that in consequence, oi in spite of their course of treatment, they might grow up well developed in body and mind. INVASION OF INFANT ROOM. The formal teaching of reading and writing threatened to invade the infant room to such an extent as to crush out of their, memories ail recollection that such a man as Froebel over lived. “Unreal arithmetic” in all classes died very hard; first standard children who scarcely understood the meaning of “one hundred” were set to add up six lines or more of figures with six columns in each; fifth standard boys were expected to show the same skill in working commercial sums as the practised clerk. The worst of it was that a skilled teacher could succeed in making the children, or a good proportion of them, do’these things; but .at what cost of warped bodies and minds? Would it not pay to let the child grow in a more natural way, guiding him at each age according to its powers end its needs? The curiosity of the infant to examine into things might he directed to grow into the trained observation of the man of science. When he looked back and asked himself what good there was in the teaching of Latm and Greek, he was constrained to answer that it was not grammar or philology or syntax, but interest in the life of the past, in its history and literature. Tbe child loved stories, and for the ordinary boy or girl who was not destined to be a grammarian or a philologist, whatever served the love of the history and literature of tho past would secure to him or to her what was most valuable in tho older studies. CONTACT WITH LIFE. They must bring their teaching into the closest possible contact with life, with the ideals of life as they now view them. If tho schools did not in the best sense fit their pupils for the needs of their future lives, theorists might talk about the culture of this study or that as much as they liked; but the schools would have failed, because to the great majority of . their pupils the lessons of- the classroom had no relation to the facts of .the universe, moral or otherwise. It was on this ground principally that he urged tho introduction of what were known as vacational courses into our secondary schools. A vacational course, as thus understood, was not a technical or professional course, nor merely externally and immediately utilitarian, as those who were sometimes brusquely termed the bread and buttei school would have it to be. It was essentially a course of general education, with the English and history, tho mathematics, and at least part of the science, and the physical training common to ifc with the other courses; but a course in which a certain part of the work was brought into close contact with the facts of life in which tho child found itself and with the aims of the most probable calling tho child would follow. The purely utilitarian was not the true view, whatever immediate advantages it presented. A broader view than that of tho bread and butter school would provide a better general education and at the same time probably give a man all tho bread ho needed or deserved. NEW ZEALAND’S NEED. New Zealand needed to consider all its courses and syllabuses in view ot tho new ideals of life which it had adopted. Tho old pass system formed a method of judging the quantity

rather than the quality of the work done. They now a’wanted statistics, which would show what kind of work m-At children of a certain age or class, did. Tho collection of these would be a useful task to give the more advanced students, say, the graduate students In our training colleges. There would then be more solid ground than there now was on which to rest reforms. They could with greater certainty hope to bring then teaching into close accord with the natural powers of the children. The school had been viewed as a part ol the society in which we lived. For that reason ho considered a -local, education authority with substantial powers and responsibilities to be an essential factor in a successful school system, of which primary, secondary, aiid technical schools, libraries, museums, social and athletic clubs, parents’ meetings, and so forth, should all be recognised as constituent parts supplementing one another. Tho school system should bo part of the municipal system, tho school an essential element of the life of tho township. He believed such a system would be more stable for tho material bond of local financial responsibility. (Applause.)