The Daily News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1901. DEFECTIVE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXIII, Issue 263, 7 November 1901, Page 2

The Daily News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1901. DEFECTIVE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.

Atibmtiok is being repsatedly called to our defective educational system as compared with those adopted in Germany and America. In both of these countries very complete technical schools enable children to leave school ready for every-day work. The defects, in the English educational system have been very forcibly pointed out by Max Schmidt, an eminent German, in the columns of the London Daily Mail, where in the course of a very interesting article be sayfc :—lf the world were still an Adamic paradise; if men were like the lilies of the field, neither toiling nor spinning ; and if the important duties of humanity were restricted to eating, drinking, sleeping, social intercourse, and amusement, you British would be among the best-educated people on the faco of the globe. For a delightful companion in my hours of leisure and relaxation, give me the so-called educated Englishman. He stand unrivalled. Unfortunately, save in a few thrice-blessed corners of your beautiful country, the world fs not an Adamic paradise, and men have ceased to be lilies of the field. Life is a complicated and ceaseless struggle, wherein brains play a greater part than muscle; and wherever competition is allowed fair scope, knowledge is power. For life under such conditions, the average Britisher is singularly ill equipped. The lower classes among you have benefited somewhat i-y the legis- 1 lative enactments of 1870, and subsequent years, and are now a little better suited than they used to be for participation in the conflict for existence. Not even they, however, can yet moet Germans or Americana on equal terms. As for the average Briton of tho higher social orders, he is practically uneducated, so far as his fitness for the serious work of the world is concerned. He is still brought up very much as he wae two or tbrea hundred years ago. As a boy of ten or eleven he goes to a public school where he remains for six, seven, or eight years. There he spends most of his not too numerous hours of study in learning classics, mathematics of a non-practical kind, a very little history, and tome useless scraps of one, or at moat two, modern languages. Most of this long period of training, in fac f , has as its professed object, not so much the arming and instruction of the youngster for the actual work of the coming fray, as the general hardening, so as to speak, of his intellectual muscles. All that is really taught in the majority of English public schools is the art of how t« learn. It is scarcely pretended that classics and theoretical mathematics are in themselves of much assistance in the work of ordinary life ; but it is supposed that a British boy during his seven years of public schooling goes through a course of mental gymnastics, by the aid of which he can subsequently, should he care I o do so, acquire useful and practical knowledge with relatively small exortion. Granting the utility of these mental gymnastics, I fail to see the wisdom of giving a boy little or nothing elss during eo long and important a period of his life. The too frequent result is that the youngster of seventeen or 1 eighteen, on quitting school, can I neither write nor spell his mother tongue, cannot follow an ordinary conversation in any language sive his own, knows little of general and less of political geography, is entirely ignorant of any his'orv other than English, Roman, and Gieek, arid understands absolutely nothing about foreigo. literature, the development of the arts and sciences, and the majority of technical questions. Upon leaving school your boy either enters a profession or other calling, or pracceds to one of the universities. It seldom happens that he can enter any profession, or even begin a special course of s'udy for it, without first availing himself of the assistance of the most demoralising and pernicious of British institutions, the crammer. He is far too uneducated, although, in all probability, at leas . £IOOO has been spent upon his training, and although he may be regardeJ at home as a boy who has done extraordinarily well. TBb crammer does not pretend to continue tho youth's education. He only pretends to show bis pupil how to circumvent the exiininers. Should the pupil succed in doing this, both he and the ciammei are more than satisfied. The crammer advertises the fact, and so obtains more pupils: the boy, having attained his immediate object, forgets even the little that the crammer has taught him.

He has acquired nothing solid, and be goas forth to his work still uneducated in any proper sense of the term. If, inateid of entering a profession at the earliest possible date, the boy proceeds to a university, he secures, I grant you, magnificent facilities for making up for j lost time. But it does not follow that i he will utilise them. He is not bound to do so. He may be almost as idle as he chooses. He is not mado' to work. Unless he be well-nigh deficient in inte'ligence, he cao se- , cure a pass degree without adding anything appreciable to the knowledge that was his whenj three years earlier* he said good-bye to his sixth-form friends at school. And just as all cats are black at night; so are all Cambridgj or Oxford B.A.'s of equal value so far as the outside world can distinguish. The university caresr I allow, is a good social education. It completes the agreeable character of the so-called educated Englishman. But, at letst in the majority of cases, university life dots little else for the man. It does not, save in comparatively rare instances, render him the fitter for the struggle in the practical workaday world. ' You ought to reform all this. You can exercise your buy in most wholesale mental gymnastics without restricting his studies to useless subjects. I cannot Understand why your scheme of secondary education, while still aiming at the training of the intellectual muscles, should not also aim at the imparting of practically useful knowledge. I have heard British pedagogues lament that in days of the multiplication of subjects it is impossible to teach a boy everything. That may be true. At the same time, it is about the strongest argument that could be supplied against teichiog a boy anything that is not likely to be of practical use to him. He may have time afterwards for the acquisation of purely ornamental knowledge, and he may then please himself in the matter; but surely during the tsn or twelvo

years when he is statu pupillari, and is ostensibly fitting himself out, under expert direction, for his lifo'a struggle he ought not only to be given plonty of the most nourishing mental food, and do other, but also be forced to eat it, and be so treated that he may thoroughly digest it. Instead, however, of taking this view, your masters of great schools encourage classical, to the prejudice of practical, and modem education. They even suggest in their conversation that there is something ungentlemanly in chemistry or natural science, something i a trifle dishonourable in geography, something little short of shameful in the living languages. As I bave said before, you are essentially a nation ! of amateurs, of dilettanti. There was a time when you could . afford to be so. Your insular i position, your overwhelming saa : power, the extent and richness cf your I foreign possessions, your physical , vigour, and, not least, your extraordi- . nary good fortune, rendered it exceed - > ingly difficult for your neighbours to > rival you with much hope of success. ■ But your neighbours have now dis ; covered tbo weapon wherewith to smiie > you hip and thigh unless you moud ■ your ways and beat them on their i ground as well as on yours. That weaI pon is education. You W'll be de- . feated along the whole line if you do 1 not speedily arm yourself with as good ; specimens of that weapon as Germany' . and America have at hand. You , should invite a commission, composed [ not of pedagogues, but of the most sue--3 cessful men in all branches of science, j literature, manufactures, commercp, i and the useful arts, to sit. upon the ( whole system of your public schools and b universities, and make a report; for it i rests with you whother, by your .public j schools and universities, you shall live or die.