RELATION OP A UXIVERSITY TO TEACHERS. 



779 



In the name of common sense let us Australians look this thing 

 in the face, and admit our past faults, with a view to future improve- 

 ment. New school buildings are of little avail if teachers will not, 

 or cannot, manage them properly. Their xnanagement is a technical 

 matter which must be learned. New peaagogic methods are largely 

 waste of time unless the physical material on which they are to be 

 used is first brought into a reasonable condition of receptiveness. 

 The waste of school time arising from unrecognised physical defects 

 is enormous. Book knowledge and parlour tricks in frail or defective 

 bodies are of little avail in these days of hard competition and strain. 

 Life is artificial, and children should be taught, above all other 

 knowledges, how to live it in reasonable physical comfort and safety. 

 The protection of the body is merely applied common sense, expressed 

 in simple physical terms, that of the bodies of others is the applica- 

 tion of the " golden rule" in similar terms. 



If the educationist is to become worthy of his name let him take 

 a reasonable view of his position, and recognise the fact that he, as 

 a class, knows little or nothing as yet about the really important part 

 of the material he works in. Then let him take steps to acquire the 

 necessary knowledge to employ and impart it, and thereby to lift 

 himself from his present position as a wholesale or retail manu- 

 facturer of physical defectives and of mental ignoramd to that which 

 his self-claimed title implies. 



g.—THE RELATIO^^ OF A UNIVERSITY TO PRIMARi' AND 

 SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS. 



By REGiy ALD H. ROB, M.A., Jfrincipal of the Brisbane Grammar School. 



The announcement, made by the Queensland Government that a 

 university is to be estalDlished here in the present year, renders the 

 present occasion appropriate for the discussion of the more important 

 questions which have to be decided in order to place our university, 

 from the start, in its proper relation with our existing school system. 

 Our new university must not stand alone in majestic isolation from 

 all other educational agencies : it must be the heart which sends 

 the life-blood pulsating through our whole educational system. There 

 is probably no phase of its beneficial activity in which it will have 

 greater possibilities of developing and quickening the intellectual 

 intelligence of our community than in its influence upon the training 

 of our primaiy and secondary school teachers, and, since the Minister 

 for Public Instruction has announced his intention of establishing 

 a training college for teachers simultaneously with the foundation of 

 the university, there is good hope that there will be a close connection 

 between the two institutions from the first. It is by no means 

 implied that all primaiy school teachers shall be graduates, though 

 certainly we may hope for a larger percentage of graduates amongst 

 our primaiy teachers than we can show now; but we may hope 

 that in future all primaiy teachers will have direct contact with 

 university life and training during some part of their course, to 

 enlarge their mental culture and widen their outlook upon life. 

 Schoolmasters should avoid becoming a special caste. Their friend- 

 ships and interests should be closely connected with those of other 



