LIBERAL EDUCATION

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20989, 16 December 1939, Page 8

LIBERAL EDUCATION

LONGER SCHOOL LIFE TREASURES OF KNOWLEDGE CHILDREN “LACK INITIATIVE” “Parents continue to ask that their daughters may sit for the University Entrance Examination after three years secondary work, instead of •* sti P Ula ted by the university wm’ states the Headmistress of the Waikato Diocesan School for Girls. Miss A. E. Satehell, in her annual report. “In nearly all cases, though the actual syllabus may have been hurriedly covered in three years, the minds of the candidates are not mature enough to cope successfully with the examination. They lack the power of judgment and discrimination and have no confidence in their own ability to pass. “I do not consider it a good plan to allow them to try at the end of three years, when they have very little chance of passing, just for the sake of experience. A failure, I think, only makes them more nervous next time and gives them an inferiority complex about examinations and increases their lack of confidence in themselves. It is also bad for the reputation of the school to have a large number of failures.

“It is, of course, quite possible by concentrating on fewer subjects to put candidates through the examination in three years, but in a school of this kind we aim at a wider type of education. Religious instruction, music, art, drill, and games have all to be fitted into the curriculum. The candidate who gives time and attention to all these and attempts six subjects for the entrance examination and takes four years over it, is more liberally educated than one who “crams” in five subjects and does it in three years.

“Education has sometimes been regarded only as a “drawing out” of what is in the child, and far too much has been talked and written in the past about “self-expression.” A part of education at least consists surely in putting before the young the treasures from the storehouse of knowledge accumulated through the ages, and the opening of their eyes to truth and beauty in as many directions as possible—a pulling up of blinds in the room of the mind, opening un wonderful vistas in this direction or that.

“With some of them it is probably only at school that their minds will ever have the chance of catching a glimpse of the treasures that are there; and all these explorations of truth and beauty help towards the fuller development of personality, which is one of the aims of education. Therefore it always seems to me rather a waste of time for a chilci in its few precious school years, to turn aside from such subjects as Latin, history and mathematics and learn shorthand and typewriting instead, which have nothing but a commercial and utilitarian value. ' “I should like to impress upon parents the value to their daughters of a year in the sixth form,” states the headmistress. “If a girl intends to go on to the university she is usually too young and immature to do so immediately after passing the entrance examination. She can go on with university work in the sixth form and begin her actual university career with more poise, confidence and experience the following year. Even if a girl is not academically inclined, her year in the sixth is of great value culturally.

Insight Into Organisation flub “We have noticed that particularly this year, when a great deal of good work has been done in English literature, history and art by non-aca-demic members of the sixth. It is also good for those at the top of the school to be given some insight into the organisation necessary in running any kind of institution, and to learn to take a share of responsibility and to put back into the school something of what they have gained from it. For general character training I think the year in the sixth is invaluable. “I am somewhat distressed at the number of children there are who never read. They are usually the ones with a poor vocabulary and no power of expressing themselves in good English, either orally or in writing. If children grow up without a love of reading it means they are cut off from one of the chief sources of education throughout life. There are many children who cannot even concentrate sufficiently to listen to a story. Those parents who make a point of reading aloud to their children often and from an early age, and who also encourage, their children to read for themselves, are doing more than they realise towards the mental development of their children. Lack of Initiative “Another rather noticeable characteristic of many of the present-day children (due I suppose to the fact that many of them are only children and have everything done for them) is their lack of initiative. They simply will not attempt by themselves anything that seems difficult, but ask for help all the time. It is hard to know how to make them self-reliant, but if home and school combine in not ‘spoon-feeding’ them, this should help to develop a more hardy and independent spirit.”