South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2678, 19 October 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1881.

Mu Wakefield has been asked some questions in the course of his tour through his electorate, upon a few points connected with common school education, and in reply expressed some unwillingness to attempt to modify in any way the existing system. His having been publicly asked those questions, suggests that some other questions on the same topic might perhaps be usefully asked of him by his constituents, by all constituents of all candidates, and by everybody of everyone who has anything to do with the management of the educational system. Those questions are, Whether the results of the heavy annual expenditure of money from the pockets of the taxpayers, and of physical and mental labor on the part of the children taught, are at all satisfactory ? Whether the list of subjects comprised in the“ Standards ” is not so long and varied that the attempt to teach them at all must end in failure to teach any one of them properly ? Whether the leaching of some of them, even if successful, does not cost more than they are worth ? Whether, in short, our educational system is not fatally and ridiculously ambitious, and destined, if not to break down, to fail signally to serve the ends it was proposed to fulfil ? The system is now in as good working order as it is likely to be got into. The machinery for forcing the children through the “ Standards ” mill is complete, or so nearly so that but trifling improvements are to be expected in the future; and what are the results, and what do they promise to be ? How much better fitted are the boys and girls now leaving school to become good and and useful citizens than they would have been if they had never sat upon the regulation form, with the regulation desk in front of them, to go through the regulation drilling in the multitude of subjects that they are expected to learn something of in order to pass through the regulation examinations ? Yery little, very little indeed. They have probably learned to read and write and to “ do sums ” ; but they have not, in the majority of instances, learned what to read, nor why they were taught to read 5 they can write good copies perhaps and transcribe fairly from a printed book, but the real use of writing, the only use it has outside the walls of a school, the expression of their own thoughts, is generally an unknown thing to them; they can “ do sums,” but to enable them to apply the principles of arithmetic to the practical business of life requires a further training, luckily less arduous than in the case of other subjects. And to acquire such facilities as they do acquire in using these three instruments of intercourse, several years of hard drudgery are required. The time required and the drudgery demanded are not all to b& charged against these requirements however ; the greater portion are to be debited to the account of other subjects upon which the children’* trau is

wasted, and their patience—not their intelligence exercised. The time spent in our schools in cramming children with historical and geographical facts which have no relation, and never will have any relation, to their own lives, amounts in the course of an ordinary school life, to a very considerable term; and the same is true regarding the time spent m learning to repeat, and in vain attempts to apply, the rules of English grammar, which is to children one of the most uninteresting branches of the tree of knowledge. Mr Hill, the Inspector of Schools to the Hawke’s Bay Education Board, is quite of this opinion, and condemns the “Standard” system in the strongest terms, and he is especially severe upon the amount of work required from pupils in the fields of history, geography, and grammar. In a recent report to bis Board he says :—“I venture to caution the Board as to the benefits derived from teaching these subjects as now arranged. I have a high opinion of the value of history, geography, and grammar of the right sort, and rightly pursued, but I think there are many subjects of more importance to the happiness of the children, and to the prosperity of the district, and coming within their experiences, which might be substituted in the school curriculum. Children are obtaining an acquaintance with knowledge which in itself is of a most indefinite character, and tending, as it appears to me, to make them discontented with their lot in life, because it is knowledge which they feel incapable of using in their various pursuits and callings. The future bushman, ploughman, and mechanic are provided with the same tools to perform entirely different functions in life, with the result, as I have shown, that in the schools words are now an equivalent for ideas, memory for mind, and instruction for education.”

The creators of our educational system looked upon their work as did the Great Creator upon his, and “ saw that it was good but as they were not omnipotent, and if possible still less omniscient, it can hardly be considered heretical to doubt whether their opinion of their own work is worthy of all acceptation. The system was not freely accepted from the first, but it was pleaded for it that it should have a trial. We are becoming accustomed to it, to itsdefects as well as its excellences, and are forgetting that it needed trial, or at any rate are neglecting to inquire what the results of that trial hare been. Our Education Boards have done fairly well perhaps in their capacity as managers of the material part of the education system ; they have provided passably good buildings and playgrounds, they look carefully after the planting of trees and hedges, and the sinking of wells and the digging of drains and so forth, as well bb their means will allow, and they exercise a reasonable amount of care in choosing and appointing teachers to take charge of the schools and carry out the established system. But they do not seem to be responsible in any degree for the nature of the education or instruction imparted in those schools ; judging from the reports of their proceedings published in the papers they never ask a question about it except it be one relative to Bible reading. Whose business is it to inquire whether the really important part of the system—the nature of the teaching given in the schools—is as good as it ought to be, or whether it is really good at all? Nearly everyone is pleased to hear of the continued increase in the number of schools, and in the number of children in attendance, and will take some pains to get good school premises in his neighborhood, and will manifest some anxiety that parents should regularly send their children to them. And that is all. So long as the outward and visible signs of a public education are numerous it is taken for granted that the growing generation are being educated ; whereas the very reverse may be the case. There is one glaring defect in the system. Those whose business it is to test the progress made by the pupils have hard and fast rules laid down by which they must make the test, and those rules have been framed by others, who were unfitted for the task. The teachers have to teach, and the Inspectors have to inspect, with reference to a defined system of “ Standards,” applied without distinction of local circumstances to all public schools in the colony. In some cases the course of instruction may fit in with local circumstances so as to be educative ; in the majority probably there is no such coincidence, and the main part of the course of instruction is a course of useless, and worse than useless, cram. In respect of a number of subjects set down in the syllabus of instruction this is so nearly the case in every instance that a revision of the syllabus is as much required as was the revision of the Bible. If people would earnestly and intelligently enquire what the teachers do in the schools that have been provided and are being maintained at so great an expense, they would be surprised, shocked, to find how large a portion of thejr time is spent in a wearisome attempt to feed and strengthen their pupils’ minds with a lot of unpalatable, innutritious, and utterly valueless husks.