Abstract
AFTER the presidential address, the section took up the discussion of the reform of the primary school. Mr. J. C. Legge dealt with handwork, but unfortunately he spent the greater part of his half-hour upon historical and psychological preliminaries. Of the constructive suggestions outlined in the abstract the most interesting was the idea of finding in the soldiers returned from the war a great reservoir of admirable men who might be trained as teachers of handwork. He concluded with a plea for greater freedom to local authorities, a freedom such as would allow them to develop along their own lines, under the gentlest supervision from a very human central authority. Prof. T. P. Nunn pointed out the dangers of formality in handwork-a danger from which Mr. Legge's paper was not wholly free, in so far as it seemed to separate the activity of muscle and nerve from purposefulness. Manual activity must not be regarded as an end in itself, a danger which it shared with all other school subjects, as shown especially by mathematics and geography. Some body of central interest, life itself perhaps, is essential in order to give meaning to the several parts of the curriculum. In school, handwork should be an aid to the so-called intellectual subjects, and it should be the means of developing the feeling for craftsmanship and art. Prof. J. A. Green pleaded for a larger place and a new use for books. The booki-ness of the primary school was not due to a superfluity of books, but to the unrealities for which books stood. Rightly understood, it is more books, pot fewer, that are wanted there. A disappointing discussion followed, in which side-issues rather than fundamentals were raised-a result perhaps inevitable when the wide range of the subject is remembered.
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Education at the British Association . Nature 98, 217 (1916). https://doi.org/10.1038/098217a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/098217a0