Master Defends Penny Dreadfuls

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 414, 24 July 1928, Page 16

Master Defends Penny Dreadfuls

CURRICULA TOO RIGID

EFFECT ON THE CHILD

“There is no harm to the boy in a penny dreadful” of a good healthy type. We are too anxious sometimes to put classics into the hands of the children and then we are disappointed when they do not enjoy them. Before the Auckland Educational As-

sociation last evening Mr. F. A. Garry, headmaster of Mount Roskill School, gave an address on “Curriculum in Relation to School Life,” and pointed out some of the mistakes he believed were being made. In the past, he said, the curriculum had been infinitely too rigid and pupils had been turned out on a pattern, the wholo system being dominated by examination. Another failing had been that the making of “little men” and “little women” had been sought. Curriculum should give a bias to wider education to the child in order to make it a good and useful unit of the complex social organisation. The fundamentals should be provided upon which tho child could build. Mr. Garry emphasised the value of encouraging play and recreation. The main object of the school should be to see that every child within its walls cultivated individual thought. That, it was satisfactory to see, was the very essence of the new primary school syllabus. SECONDARY SCHOOLS The headmaster of the Auckland Grammar School, Mr. H. J. D. Mahon, said that one of the main difficulties of tho secondary school course was that tho secondary schools received the pupils at too advanced an age. If pupils entered about the ages of 11 and 12, and remained for four years, an education could be imparted to the majority of them that would fit them to enjoy life and live a full life. When the pupil left the school he should bo able to express himself clearly, should have some knowledge of literature and one foreign language, and should be able to calculate quickly and accurately. The history should be of the child’s own country and that of historical empires. A grounding in physical science should be given, and a sense of the beautiful developed in the teaching of literature and drama. At the end of four years some would leave and tho best should be kept on and specialised subjects taken for two more years. The main obstacle to this was the matriculation examination, which was a “bugbear” to education.