The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1926. OUR TECHNICAL SCHOOLS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1926, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1926. OUR TECHNICAL SCHOOLS.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that nerds resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that *c« can do.

To-day the annual conference of the technical school teachers opened in Wellington, and the presidential address, delivered by Mr. Park, director of Auckland Technical College, raises a question of extreme importance in regard to the Dominion's educational curriculum. Taking as his text, passages in the University Commission's report, and in the report presented to the Education Department by Mr. Frank Tate, Director of Education of Victoria, Mr. Park urges strongly that steps should be taken to promote the progress of technical education here by the establishment of junior technical high schools.

This suggestion is obviously based on the experiment already made here with what are known as junior high schools. No doubt there is scope for these institutions, and as preparatory schools for those who intend to take University courses they are already a proved success. But clearly, if junior secondary schools of this type are to be established in all large centres of population to feed the high schools, which send on their pupils to the University colleges. in course of time the sources from which our technical schools and colleges now draw their pupils will dry up and, in fact, the technical colleges must eventually tend to disappear. Naturally, Mr. Park is apprehensive lest the wholesale establishment of junior high schools should react injuriously upon the technical colleges. And his anxiety has been justified by the apparent intention of the Director of Education to limit post-primary education to junior high schools attached to senior high schools working on existing lines. At Christchurch the technical college board of governors has already taken alarm and has adopted a series of resolutions protesting strongly against any attempt at thus restricting secondary education to the type available in high schools organised principally to prepare students for the University. Evidently Mr. Park will find a good desl of support for the views that he has expressed in his address, and we may now consider them briefly in detail. In his opinion primary education ought to end as Mr. Tate suggests, at the fourth standard, and pupils should then be drafted either into junior high schools or junior technical schools, in preparation for the work that they are subsequently to take np. Mr. Park deals at length with the objection that children at twelve and thirteen years are too young to choose their own vocation, and even to have it chosen for them; and he

also combats vigorously the suggestion that two co-existing types of secondary schools would of necessity involve invidious social distinctions. The conclusion that he reaches is identical with Mr. Tate's, that junior technical, schools to feed the Technical Colleges should stand side by side with the junior high schools which the Education Department is already establishing. While we are by no means inclined to accept unconditionally the views of Mr. Tate and Mr. Park on this important question, we admit that there is a -rent deal to be said for their main contention. Our secondary schools, as at present constituted, are organised too exclusively for the purpose of training students to take up professional occupations, and it is very doubtful whether a large proportion of the young men and women now crowding into legal, educational or clerical work would not do better for themselves and for the country by securing vocational training on other lines in technical colleges. Granting this, we must admit that if the existing secondary schools are to nave attached to them junior preparatory schools, then to save our technical colleges we must have junior technical schools as well. But what of the expense? Already the country is spending some three and a-half millions a year on educational purposes. Can Mr. Tate or Mr. Park suggest a way of expanding our technical school system without at the same time crippling or starving the secondary schools, on which our University no\v virtually depends?