The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 42

Introductory

Introductory.

The following small contribution to School Bank literature has been written for the purpose of introducing afresh the subject of School Penny Banks to the New Zealand public; also with the hope of rekindling those efforts evinced by School Committees, teachers, and others of the community, to make these institutions part of our educational machinery, when, on a late occasion, the scheme was in agitation.

It is assumed that there is a wide-spread conviction that the modern system of education is wholly at variance with common sense and reason. Let any thinking being ask himself what is the result of six or eight years' schooling on a boy or girl of fourteen or sixteen years of age, when, as the phrase is, "education is finished." How, in any sense whatever, are they fitted to enter life? "At present," says one of our own Professors, * "our higher education leads nowhere, qualifies for nothing." Let us try mentally to realize what are the requirements of our Colony for the education of its youth, who are to guide its future and do its actual work, who are to develope its resources and maintain its prosperity, improve the moral tone of its people, elevate their character and teach them how to value order, industry, cleanliness, and other such habits,—and how painfully defective is the training, they receive. The essential is ignored, and the unimportant devours the golden hours of life's spring-time. Not a single study in the code points to the culture of the moral faculties, developing, in their highest sense, love to God and our fellow men, truth, honor, integrity, reverence, charity, forbearance, and the like; nor habits and duties which call into daily exercise self-restraint, courtesy, punctuality, order, diligence, faith in what is right, and such other Christian virtues. Nor apart from the higher, can much other be said of the elementary education of the day. Fröbel is said to have claimed having a prophetic mission as an educational reformer. Heaven grant that it might be so! His principles are uncontrovertible.

On elementary education, one of Fröbel's disciples

‡ Karl Fröbel, a nephew.

speaks to this effect. "It is a law of human nature, or of the human mind, that our knowledge begins and must begin with concrete things, with the objects around us, most of which are the most complicated productions of nature and culture. Thinking in abstractions requires the matured powers of the intellect. Elementary instruction should be, to lead children gradually and eventually to abstract thinking, not to begin with it, as the modern system attempts in years of unsuccessful effort. To force children, therefore, in our so-called elementary schools to learn rules, dates, and names for abstractions, and for things which they cannot yet realize in their minds, only produces a slavish indifference and apathy that must be forced into attention by punishments and rewards, or an unhealthy excitement in competition for prizes and flattery. This is not education, this is cramming; and, its most showy success turns out egregious failure."

Now the Bank in the School offers one means by which a beginning of educational reform in the direction above indicated could be made. The action in conduct, in work and in results, requires no abstract reasoning on the part of a child—if that were possible. "Here is a shilling, or a half-crown, or any sum as the case may be,—the pennies I've been putting into the Bank, and with this sum I am now going to buy a knife, a hook, a boat, a doll." The whole process is within its grasp, and meanwhile, education of the highest value has been doing its work in calling into exercise patience, self-denial, system, &c.

It is passing strange indeed, why the right management of money, involving the highest degree of care, wisdom, and prudence, should not be from the beginning of school life made a subject of education. More or less, all children get money into their possession; there are also a thousand ways in which they might be encouraged to earn it; but besides this, they should receive systematically a little pocket money from their parents,—it might be so small a sum as even a penny, or sixpence, or a shilling a week. In whatever way they come to have it, they should not be ordered, but encouraged to put it in the Bank, and to let it accumulate for a purpose. It must ever be kept before the children that the money is put there for a time only; it might be withdrawn for some such occasion as a birth-day, at Christmas or New Year; but whether for holiday or useful purposes, though all taken out at such times as these and wholly spent, the lessons in conduct, in experience, and result, have all been gained, and by constant repetition, leave indelible impressions.

In the body of the pamphlet it has been suggested that thrift, or rather economics should have a place in the code, so that the subject should become a specific study, and that it might supplant with advantage Grammar. And this should meet with no objectors. Grammar is a purely abstract study, and not essential to being able to both speak and write the English language with correctness. At any rate, it is altogether unfitted for a school study until the reasoning faculties of children are somewhat developed: and with little loss whatever to education, it might well be expunged from the elementary code.

The present opportunity is embraced for expressing to Mr. W. Meikle, of the National Security Savings Bank of Glasgow, and to Mr. Banner Newton, of the Liverpool Savings Bank, a sense of their great and continued kindness in forwarding reports and other papers on the progress of School Banks in Great Britain and elsewhere. Also, for letters and papers of much interest, to Colonel Akroyd, M.P., of Halifax (Yorkshire); Mr. Peter Bent, of the Yorkshire Penny Bank; Mr. Crallan, of Hayward's Heath, Sussex; and Mr. Oulton, of Liverpool.

To Mr. W. Gray, of the General Pest Office, Wellington, acknowledgements are likewise due for his unremitting and courteous attention as a correspondent in connexion with the necessary preparations for these Banks.

L. W. D.

* The Higher Education in New Zealand, by Prof. Shand, N.Z. Magazine, July, 1877.

Founder of the Kindergarten System.