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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 20, No. 14. September 26, 1957

[Introduction]

Education as a subject is suspect in the University. It is too new. It is eclectic: a ragbag of other subjects. It lacks tradition, scholarship, discipline. . . . Moreover, it fails dismally in practice: our young play more, and know less than their parents. They can't read, write, spell, or do arithmetic. . . . Educational theory is responsible for bodgies, widgies, sexual crime, gambling, the A bomb, and a low percentage of passes in Stage I university subjects. Teachers are a pretty poor lot and teaching hardly a respectable profession.

Most of this, in my opinion, is arrant nonsense. I would remind you that education is not new: not even in the narrow sense. Socrates was a teacher. Plato and Aristotle were not only teachers: they ran schools, and took fees. Moreover, they thought of themselves as teachers primarily, and as philosophers only secondarily. I have heard students from Victoria College, brought up on so-called "formal disciplines," sneer at teaching as a profession. I would add to the list of teachers the names of others no one can afford to sneer at. Leaving aside Confucius and Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth. I would remind you of Aquinas and Abolard. Erasmus. Thomas More. Vittorino da Feltre. Vives. Rabelais, Montaigne. Sir Thomas Elyot. Comonius. Milton. Rousseau. Postalozzi. Frocbel. Hegel. Herbart, and John Dewey. That education is eclectic, this list both demonstrates and justifies: for the great names in education compass history, philosophy, religion, language, and science. So do the "great names" in any other of these disciplines, for knowledge is compartmented only in the minds of small men. The only study is man in his universe, though the attack may be from different vantage points. The accumulation of knowledge, and the building of civilisation (whatever that may be), depends not least on those who set out deliberately to teach and especially to teach the voting. It could be said that all philosophy attempts to answer what should he taught, and that all history in some measte reflects what has been learnt, if these generalisations are true, it must be of extreme importance how well whatever has been taught has been taught, and to whom.

"hardly respectable"

"hardly respectable"

All this leads directly into my subject, the "new" education. Newness is most suspect to the dead, who cannot feel it: or to the during, who do not wish to be disturbed Nuclear physics is a new subject: dare we ignore its importance? English had no chair at Oxford or Cambridge until the turn of the century: that is why Scotsmen and Scandinavians teach it (Jesperson and Ian Gordon have had longer traditions to work on than mere Englishmen, who take their language for granted). Psychology is new; James and Freud are within living memory. Knowledge is old, but the ways in which we learn are still being determined. We know more about it now than mankind has ever known, and the knowledge is not to be sneered at. Indeed, it is crucial, if Locke was important, it was not because he lived a long time ago, as traditionalists implicitly assert. It is rather because he furthered an understanding of understanding: which is precisely why Temian. Merrill. Vernon, and the All ports are important, in spite of the fact that they are still alive! Educational psychology is not unimportant because it is still experimental. It is important because it is experimental. Educational psychology is one of the bases of the "new" education. For good or ill, people learn more of whatever is being taught by the right methods than by the wrong methods. Right and wrong, in mythology, can be determined only experimentally.