PLEA FOR A SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 8

PLEA FOR A SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

Re writer of this article argues that, as Education is to-day the most important factor in our social life, a School of Education. should be set up to imbue it with a Philosophy of Life. This School, he urges, should function in such a way as ‘not only to put teaching on a professional level but also to give light arid leading 6n' educational’ issues, viewed in the broadest sense, to the whole Dominion. .

| Written for "The Listener" |

by

F. L.

COMBS

lt el = =e" HEN I began teaching in Wellington 47 years ago there was no training college. During a time of depression and "cuts" it*had been "cut to the bone." On a wage of £26 a year pupil teachers turned for guidance to school method books. These books gave four-fifths of their space to expounding ways of teaching the various subjects. They dwelt long and with a care the reverse of tender on arithmetic. With my fellow apprentices I took these method books in good faith. You may have seen a grocer bagging up sevens of sugar and twelves of flour against a rush of trade. In much the same way it was for the teacher to bag up Arithmetic, Spelling, Geography, etc., his fifty to ninety pupils being the bags, The rush he prepared for was a rather rhadamanthine annual examination, I am forced to admit that I made this bagging-up business my. main concern for nearly 20 years. I taught Arithmetic really well. There were thotisands of primary teachers who could do this. When I was in my thirties I was still unaware that education was a part and a supremely important one of the exter- nal scheme of things, one to which so great a poet as Wordsworth had given inspired and inspiriting attention. But the sturdy barque Education (or say rather Instruction) had sprung a leak and ideas were beginning to seep in. Sir John Adams in his pithy, humorous way had hinted that as necessary to a teacher as Anowing the subject he was to impart to multifarious Johns was the knowing of those Johns, Then the Dominie’s Log began ‘to sell in tens of thousands. I remember how, on reading it nearly 30 years ago, I was

diverted, Its author was certainly. amusing but, this was because he was. so absurd. Such nonsense to propound to tradesmen who had learned how to "control" a class! It outraged commonsense. It took long, slow years for my generation to realise that it was a hidebound system of subject instruction that outraged commonsense, and that Mr. O’Neill was very sensibly trying to

abolish the wooden values and \mechani-' cal virtues of the classroom and to relate schooling to the life needs of the school’s human material. Worthwhile Advances To-day the sturdy barque Instruction,. though not sunk, lies waterlogged and something of a menace to an emancipated cult of education which centres its attention on the building of personalities and the growth of souls. Teachers, on the whole, are in advance of the general public in a desire to subordinate instruction to an awakening of mind and spirit in each and all of their charges, but the public as well as the teachers have in recent years made a worth-while advance in their outlook on the physical wellbeing of the young. This brings me to the main point. Education is not the processing of young minds with the subjects of instruction. It is as large as life and for good or harm inter-penetrates every fibre of its human material. For its sagacious imparting it therefore requires a philosophy of life, It must answer the question: How (historically) have we come to. be where we are? What road should we travel now we are here? And, hardest of all, What is the supreme goal of a well-lived life and how can the educator aid both his pupils and the society whose servant he is to achieve it? Economies, a formidable if not a great science, has never, except in the case of Ruskin, set about answering this last question; maybe it cannot, but an Education which seeks to get anywhere both can and must. Humans Are Not Termites ‘This is why the indispensable basis of | Education is a Philosophy of Life, idealistic in its purpose, for human beings are not termites able to remain 40 million years without changing, realistic in its insight, for thought which does not face up to life’s realities is the nightmare "Life in Death" which haunted the poet Coleridge in his opium trances. Can a School of Education do anything to instil, and, quite as important,

to broadcast the philosophy of life on which, in and out of school, education must be based if it is to perform a vital and wholesome function? Not, I think, if Education remains in too academic trammels, not if it is a matter merely of instructing so that students, having passed examinations, shall receive credits or diplomas. The. sorry fate of a Theology of the Schools which did not get much-~beyond. this is a_ standing warning to educationists. A School of Education which merely did this: would tend rather to divorce its graduates from current realities than to equip them to cope with them. Education is an art and a_ science which cannot be confined to specialised practitioners. Parents from an angle of their own need to know as much about it as teachers, and there is no branch of trade or industry and no phase of sécial activity that does not interlock with it. Fruit of Maturity One therefore sees thronging to the school students of aH ages drawn from every walk of life-teachers, of ae membets ° of educations. x bodies, ‘commercial st leaders, women officia chew ed with socio-cultural work, a minister of education who wishes to set his course by a main bearing, etc., etc. Most of these people will be 30 plus; some will be 50. I cannot imagine the real mastery of a philosophy of life beginning before the former age. It is a fruit of maturity. Teachers of that age will, it is assumed, have been rightly guided in their -previous -practice~ and prepared therefore on entering the School to see the parts converge into a whole. There will be a variety of courses, all of them organised so as to become discussion courses in which there can be a pooling of ideas and a swapping of experiences. Occasional inspirational lectures will, one takes it, be an important function of the School’s teaching staff. Theory and practice will be kept as close together as the two sides of a shilling. A variety of research work will be embarked upon by students who have a bias in that direction but "pure" studies will be kept in wholesome disciplinary contact, with applied ones, That the teaching will lead on to the free and full use of a well-stocked library goes .without saying. Fortunately in all Universities there is an increasing tendency in that direction to-day. School with a Mission But the School will not be a stay-at-home, Its functional relationship to Democracy being so comprehensive and sa close, it cannot do that, It will be a (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) School with a mission, in this respect having certain similarities to the orders of teaching friars. It will, at judicious intervals, run refresher courses and. what have come to be known as N.E.F.’s in various centres. Mr. Fraser had the discernment ten years ago to see what an N.E.F. could do, and to back it with the whole weight of his prestige as a public man. Besides, the Schoo! will issue publications, some learned, but the bulk of them intended to enlighten the democracy whose servant it is’ as to what is. being done and should be done in the educational sphere. In _ this connection a group of trustees entitled to investigate and report in entire independence of persons, officials or interests would be of great value. Such trustee groups promise to become an increasing feature of all true modern democracies.

but to an era of vastly enhanced aspirations and powers. At least there is nothing, it seems to me, but a faith grounded upon a true philosophy of life -one that shall supplant much of our abortive getting and spending with such a growing and a becoming as is the Destiny of our often frustrated (and too often self-frustrated) species. It seems strange when one gives thought to the vital and central function of education as a profession and a science that, while this Dominion has schools of Law, Medicine, Mines, Architecture, etc., it should still be without a School of Education. Its 10,000 teachers, one is forced to infer from this fact, are regarded as of less consequence than its 1200 doctors. Whether the School of Education should be a department inside one of our four University Colleges, or a separate college like Massey College, is a minor though still important matter. With the

The School will also bring distinguished educationists to this Dominion and put each in communication with his appropriate public. How to set up such a School? Will it not take a long time? And the cost-is it not likely to be prohibitive? Is not one entitled to reply that if it were a question of remodelling our military establishment this would be done in the course of a year or two and that tens of millions would not be grudged to the doing of it? Fortunately at the moment there is a growing opinion that. parsimony as regards education is the reverse of true economy. Not a Teachers’ College At present, as our wars prove, we hesitate and temporise on the ideological frontiers of the Middle Ages, a fact which drove frantic that man of urgert imaginings, H. G. Wells. There is nothing materially lacking in a world richer a hundredfold than that of the Middle Ages to prevent-our civilisation going forward at a bound-not to a Utopia

opportunity to make a fresh start on new ground it should not, however, be merely a. School for Teachers or a Teachers’ College in the grip of an academic tradition. The need of broadcasting a realistic outlook on Education is too vital for our sore beset generation to tolerate that.