MECHANICAL AGE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 100, 18 December 1931, Page 7

MECHANICAL AGE

aBMASTER'S prophecy &EGARDING FUTURE CHANGES ;ffect of teaching irophecy that "this mechanical jvould carry with it inventions achinery that would be adopted 100I work in a way not realised was made in the annual ref Mr. W. A. Armour, headr 0f Wellington College, which ead at the college break-up ony last evening. e are often told that to-day age'of machinery," he said. jos it is more correet to say .g are only at the beginning of echanieal age. So far as the s are concerned, we scarcely ; Fow close we are to an absoljvolution in all our ideas of og, The gramophone, radioony, the cinema, the talking and television, will all very Y |)0 adopted for school work in ■ not realised to-day. hools exist for the dnal pnrpose abHng children to inherit the f of the past, and to prepare for the future. No school can jd to perform the latter task it takes account of the reonary inventions which are ating the present. As a writer e Educational Supplement of Hines* puts it, there will be in school one central installation ■R'ill be able to supply to each ny classroom. radio, television, atograph film, or gramophone I at will. Switch It On ,ch classroom will have its oym ; or prepared wall and a switchBy prossing the required i, the class may have a broadtem or a desired gramophone 1. The teacher of French or in will be able to switch his nto a French or German town ctual conversation taking place sight and hearing of everyone j classroom. The teacher of |phy will be able to travel with ass through various countries iwn?. The teacher of history alk hand in hand through the v-ith his class. The teacher of 3 will be able to do without any it of expe'nsive apparatus, behe can at any moment show les which take themselves to

pieces and fit themselves together again at any required speed, explaining as they do so how and why. "The teacher of art and music will be able to show artists actually at work. There is for the schools, then, a future in which the teacher will be aided in his work of training children to meet their world, by every expert whose voice and whose action can be reproduced by visual and auditory means, a future in which the greatest musicians, the greatest engineers, scientists, linguists, artists, business men, philosophers, will devise and demonstrate for the benefit of learners."