NEW SCHOOL SYLLABUS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 571, 25 January 1929, Page 8

NEW SCHOOL SYLLABUS

WITH the opening of Dominion primary schools for the year, opportunity will be given for a practical test of the value of the new syllabus which was last year submitted in draft form. The syllabus, as drafted, was a definite advance on any other that has been put forward, and there was an interesting concession allowing teachers to depart from its provisions so long as the freedom exercised has the approval of art inspector. The A’alue of this, of course, depends upon the ability of the teacher to use the concession and.the discrimination of the inspector’s approval or veto. The value of the syllabus being essentially the A'alue of an opportunity, it Avill ultimately succeed or fail as the teaching profession and the inspectorate succeed or fail in taking advantage of it. It is, of course, a gratifying fact that the opportunity has been offered at all; and there are many indications, distributed through the syllabus, of a more liberal conception of the teacher’s duty to the children. But it is better to postpone anything like enthusiasm until the neAV spirit proves itself by the results of its Avorking. It AA’ould seem more ungenerous and suspicious to say, “So far, so good; but Avait and see,” if experience had not very strongly demonstrated the rigid, centralising, standardising tendencies of the Education Department, which the inspectorate very largely interprets and represents. Whether reform is certain because it is promised must be at least questionable. It can only be regarded as sure when it is visible, in deeds, not in Avoids. But the very elaborateness of the syllabus is a fact Avhicli strengthens suspicion that the promise Avill, in fulfilment, mean less than its form of words suggests. Where so much is so elaborately set doAvn in black and Avhite there is already evident a loA'e of cut-and-dried instructions, the temptation to enforce Avhicli as if they Avere the tAvelA r e tables of the laAv Avill be scarcely avoidable by an inspectorate which—with distinguished but rare exceptions—has shoAvn that it thinks itself bound by duty, rather than tempted, to this sort of rigid enforcement of uniformity. “Hoav do you mix your colours?” asked the formula-hunter. “With brains, sir,” replied the artist. It is to be hoped that the teacher Avho teaches Avith brains, and not by Wellington or any other formula, Avill not in future find it go so hard Avith him, Avhen inspectors are bv, as in the past he often has. Education in New Zealand lues by this hope.