DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 247, 9 January 1928, Page 5

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

COLLEGE

( Copyright , 1928) 'OROFESSOR LOWELL said the other day: “A college cannot educate the A student.” _ Teachers put knowledge before you, but they cannot cause your brain to appropriate it. , As Dr. Johnson said about a certain definition in the dictionary whicn a young man said he could not understand, “I can supply the definitioii, but I cannot supply the brains to understand it.” A book called “Humanising Education” lies upon my desk, and it is a fierce attack upon all modern methods of education, some of it apparently well founded. Doubtless there is much in the schools and colleges to be criticised. A teacher who simply hears lessons and fits his pupils to the procrustean bed of preconceived ideas is a poor teacher. But we must remember that the country is full of serious-minded teachers who are intelligently wrestling with the problem of education. They may know as much about it as the people who are finding fault with them. Many teachers realise that a pupil is sent to school to be taught to think and not merely to memorise, and they are trying to train him in the business of thinking. The upshot of it seems to be that it is the school’s business to supply you with the materials for knowledge and to surround you with the proper atmosphere of learning, and to put you in contact with the men who have learned and know how to think. But always the question is up, at the last analysis, to the pupil. He can use his material for original thought or he can be as dry-as-dust. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. So you can send your boy to a school, but you can’t make him think. A bright young lad is no better off anywhere than in school. If he does not train nis mind there he is not going to train it anywhere. School remains the best place, on the whole, for a young man to pass his maturing years. It may swamp him and mislead him, but, on the contrary, it may stimulate him. The question is not are the schools perfect, but have you anything better to offer? Schools are progressing in methods like everything else and are becoming better all the time