The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1926. THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19721, 11 December 1926, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1926. THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

The Minister of Education has appointed a committee to revise the syllabus of the New Zealand primary schools and has given it his blessing and asked it to make all possible haste. He has been careful to give the committee a free hand, apparently rather priding himself on his refusal to interfere in any way with its deliberations. Actually he has expressed some views on the subject of homework, but somewhat apologetically, putting them forward as the opinions of other people and assuring the committee that it may take them or leave them. For the rest it is entirely for the committee to dissect the syllabus, throw away what it thinks unworthy, and submit some scheme that will be calculated to improve matters for the young people who go to school.

It may be that the committee will experience its chief difficulty in framing a syllabus so that the requirements of the older children in the primary schools may be fully met. For our own part we have no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the junior high school system offers the best possible training for children who are ready to pass out of the fourth standard. The Minister of Education, however, is rather afraid of the host of the junior high school system, and it is not improbable that he expects his committee to devise a cheap and efficient substitute for what appears to be the ideal system. It seems to be agreed that the primary system should not take’ a child up to the age of fourteen, but that there should be a change of some kind at Ihe age of twelve. Something in the nature of a secondary school syllabus for children between the age of twelve and fourteen would be of little use if the children were not to continue longer at school. Yet there can be no question but that an effort should be made to eater adequately for the child w’ho is to leave at fourteen: indeed, his need is greater in a sense than is that of his companion who can go on for some years. While it would be futile to provide a secondary school course for the child who cannot stay after fourteen it is certainly desirable that the curriculum should be sufficiently variable to give him a fair opportunity. The committee's task is to link the primary and secondary courses together in such a way that both classes of pupils may derive the maximum of benefit. There is ground for the belief that the syllabus as it exists to-day is in some respects rather academic than practical. It has been said that the arithmetic is too detached from the needs of daily life and that in English too mueh attention is given to the dry bones and too little to the vital qualities of the language and literature. Vital and practical teaching should be the aim of the syllabus, and it should not be neeassary to overcrowd the curriculum in order to make room for what is worth while. If the school course can develop the pupil's practical ability, and not merely promote development of an abstract kind, it will give satisfactory results.