The Children: Some Educational Problems | Page 3

kind from that provided by the older Universities, and a need for a type of Secondary School different in aim and curriculum from that which looks mainly to the provision of students intending to enter upon some one or other of the so-called well recognised learned professions. It is here, when compared and contrasted with the educational systems of some of our Continental neighbours, that we find the weakest point in our own system, and at the present time our most urgent need is for the extension and better equipment of the central institutions of the country which provide higher technical and commercial instruction.
This unsatisfactory condition of things is due in large measure, as we have already pointed out, to our innate dislike as a nation of all system-making, and to the distrust felt by many minds of any and every form of State control of education. Hence, partly from these causes, partly as a result of historical conditions, it has followed that various authorities have in this country the guidance and control of education, with the usual result of want of unity of aim, of lack of correlation of means, and in some cases of overlapping and waste of the means of higher education.
In the second place, while much has been done since the advent of compulsory elementary education to better the means of education and to increase the facilities for the higher instruction of the youth of the country, there is a widespread belief that all the hopes held out by the early advocates of universal compulsory education have not been realised, and that our Primary Schools in large measure have failed to turn out the type of citizen which a State such as ours requires for her after-service.
Universal education has not proved a panacea for all the social evils of the Commonwealth, and while it must be admitted that much good has resulted from the adoption of universal and compulsory education, yet at the same time certain evils have followed in its train.
Since the institution of universal education, it may be argued that the children of the nation have received a better training in the use of the more mechanical arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but the tendency has been to look upon the acquisition of these arts as ends in themselves, rather than as mere instruments for the further extension and development of knowledge and practice, and hence our Primary School system, to a large extent, has failed to cultivate the imagination of the child, and has also failed to train the reason and to develop initiative on the part of the pupil. There has been more instruction, it has been said, during the last thirty years, but less education; for the process of education consists in the building up within the child's mind of permanent and stable systems of ideas which shall hereafter function in the attainment and realisation of the various ends of life. Now, our school practice is still largely dominated by the old conception that mere memory knowledge is all-important, and as a consequence much of the so-called knowledge acquired during the school period is found valueless in after life to realise any definite purpose, for it is only in so far as the knowledge acquired has been systematised that it can afterwards be turned to use in the furtherance of the aims of adult life.
From this it follows that, since much of the knowledge acquired during the school period has no bearing on the real and practical needs of life, the Primary School in many cases fails to create any permanent or real interest in the works either of nature or of society.
But a much more serious charge is laid at times against our Primary School system. It is contended that during the past thirty years it has done little to raise the moral tone of the community, and it has done still less to develop that sense of civic and national responsibility without which the moral and social progress of a nation is impossible. Our huge city schools are manufactories rather than educational institutions--places where yearly a certain number of the youth of the country are turned out able to some extent to make use of the mechanical arts of reading and writing, and with a smattering of many branches of knowledge, but with little or no training for the moral and civic responsibilities of life. This is evident, it is urged, if we consider how little the school does to counteract and to supplant the evil influences of a bad home or social environment. What truth there may be in these charges and what must be done to remedy this state of matters will be discussed when we consider later the existing Elementary School system. Here it is