"SOFT OPTIONS."

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 43, 21 February 1927, Page 6

"SOFT OPTIONS."

We hope that the letter from Professor Anderson, dealing with University Honours, which appears in our correspondence column to-day, will receive some attention from our educational authorities, and in the meantime it is desirable to say something about Mr. Milner's proposal to readjust the Honours course with a view to reducing the preponderance now held by History, Economics, and Education. As regards Mr. Milner's plea that specialists are required to teach Mathematics and Science in secondary schools, we may point out that only a small percentage of students ever possess the natural qualifications which are requisite for specialised study in these subjects. That is one reason why relatively few students work for Honours in them. But a further, and even more important, reason for the relatively greater popularity of History and Economics is the character of the subjects themselves. Because History is the record of human experience, and Economics deals with all the most important practical problems of individual and social life, there is in them an element of broad humanity which naturally attracts a very large proportion of those students who have no special bent towards Mathematics or Science, and inspires them with an absorbing interest in their Work. Moreover, the suggestion that these subjects are "soft options," the natural resort of idle or casual students, seems to us equally unworthy and absurd. The amount of work that may be done by Honours students in all subjects is virtually unlimited, and it certainly is so in History and Economics. It is, of course, open to the University to raise its examination standard to any given level, but it may be pointed out that mathematicians and' natural and physical scientists are not well qualified to judge tie character or quality of the work required for the study of such subjects as Economics and History at the Honours grade. To assert that the study of History or Economics has less educative or cultural value than the study of Physics or Chemistry or Mechanics is, in our opinion, to fly in the face of all human experience; and whatever the secondary schools may think about the alleged perennial dearth of mathematical masters and science masters, the University ought to congratulate itself on the popularity of History and Economies as a most convincing proof that it is doing its work faithfully and sjeJL