EVILS OF SCHOOL OVERCROWDING

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 41, 11 May 1927, Page 11

EVILS OF SCHOOL OVERCROWDING

CRUSHED INDIVIDUALITY TEACHERS’ INSTITUTE PROTESTS (From Our Resident Reporter.J WELLINGTON, Tuesday. The subject which occupied the attention of the New Zeale.nd Educational Institute, at its annual conference yesterday, was one of more than usual interest since it dealt with a matter affecting the health and welfare of the children rather than the status of the teachers. Mr. B. N. T. Blake, president of the institute, in a well-reasoned address, pointed out the evils which follow from over-crowding in schools, and urged that it was false economy on the part of the Government to allow those evils to continue when extra expenditure would allow of such an increase of space and staffing as would permit the teaching of smaller classes. This would bring the children on so much more rapidly that a year’s teaching would be saved. Moreover the child’s individuality would be better studied, less punishment would be required, and altogether the young life would be lived under vastly pleasanter conditions. Mr. Blake submitted strong arguments in support of his views, stating that in the teaching of a large class, if attention were focussed on the duller pupils, say two-thirds, the brighter ones were merely marking time or forming bad habits through not being interested, and similarly, it the teacher concentrated on the quicker children, the others were left behind completely. NEVER TWO THE SAME The policy which allowed large classes to continue led inevitably to loss of personality, which was a precious thing, for in all his teaching experience he had never found two children the same, and hoped he never would. The kind of economy which allows large classes to exist, which conceives education in terms of instruction alone, is not economy at all but a blind kind of wastefulness. No parents, he was sure, would raise a murmur agajinst a further expenditure if assured by the Government that the money was needed.