54 Timehri. 



and useful which it is much more profitable to aim at developing. The 

 educational system that does not take account of native gifts is not 

 desirable. It follows from this that no system or code, however 

 excellent for a particular people, can be imported cut and dried 

 for application to a race of different character and under different 

 conditions of life. As our efforts in the colony have been mainly 

 on the lines of importing "cut and dried" the codes rather promis- 

 cuously evolved in the United Kingdam, it is just here we put 

 a finger on the radical defect of our system. When the first Council on 

 Education in 1850 reported that " the system of education was defec- 

 tive and ill-adapted to the peculiar wants of the people " I have little 

 doubt their conclusion was absolutely sound, though it is reasonable to 

 suspect that in those days there was not very much system of any kind. 

 The pity of it is that the more we have organised and systematised since 

 1850, the more " defective and ill-adapted to the peculiar wants of the 

 people " has education become. The colony is not peculiar in this how- 

 ever. Organisation based on indefinite grasp of the elementary psycho- 

 logy of the subjects, and vague ideas of the objects of education has had 

 the same result elsewhere. A coclish insalubrity has been a marked 

 feature of the Home educational atmosphere since Boards were invented. 

 That of course is not an essential fault of Boards, consisting for the most 

 part, so far as my experience goes, of worthy men who are quite anxious 

 to do their best, but of the want of a science of education which will 

 lay down laws for their guidance. 



It is pretty clear that the more systematic official codes have become 

 the less effective they have been from the man trainer's point of view. 

 That is doubtless because, under a less elaborate and comprehensive 

 wrongness of system, the spontaneous or instinctive exercise of faculty 

 had more chance. It may sound subversive of all law and order to say so, 

 but it is, I believe, true, that in human affairs it is better to leave things 

 to nature, than under a mistaken theory to dragoon men into a uniform 

 monstrosity. Happily, in spite of thwarting influences, nature will out, 

 and it is to the palliative working of a hidden world spirit and not to 

 the official codes that we must attribute any good that has come of educa- 

 tion in the second half of last century. There are, however, cheering 

 signs that a de.finite movement has come into being \vith " self-develop- 

 ment as a watchword. As a writer in the " Morning Post " some months 

 ago pointed out, the fact that the House of Commons had actually 

 discussed an educational principle, as distinct from a question of 

 apparatus, incidence of costs or control of education, is itself a sign that 

 the public is beginning to realise the existence of a right and a wrong- 

 way of educating. 



The pioneers of the movement have a big task before them. When 

 the whole system of examination tests as they exist at present " external 

 results " and " mechanical obedience "' which they abhor is overturned, 

 they must be ready to replace that system with something else. 



