"SOFT OPTIONS."

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 46, 24 February 1927, Page 8

"SOFT OPTIONS."

In his reply to Professor Anderson's letter on University Honours, Mr. Milner complains that we have been rather "curt" with him. We had to consider our space, but we certainly did not ignore "the viewpoint of secondary schools." What we raid amounts to this, that if the secondary schools need teachers in Science and Mathematics they should not attempt to get them by depreciating other subjects of at least equal cultural and educational value.

Professor Anderson, in his reply to Mr. Milner, Avhich appears in another column of this issue, suggests a course which would effectually remedy a lack of which Mr. Milner complains, and we need not discuss this aspect of the question at length. But we must express surprise at some of the statements to which Mr. Milner has committed himself. He tells us of students who have taken a First Class in History "on a year's work." Does Mr. Milner not know that to take Honours a student must work, not one, but four years at his subject?—one year, that is, at the pass and two at the advanced grade, before taking the fourth year preparatory for the M.A. Again, he tells us that for History Honours a thesis is optional; but he fails to note that under the new regulations a student who decides not to write a thesis is penalised by being compelled to take an extra examination paper.

And what is the meaning of Mr. Milner's charge that the History prescription "fails to exact original work"? In our opinion, there may be, and often is, far more genuine intellectual originality displayed in the written discussion of an historical or economic problem than in the solution of a dozen equations or the summary of a score of scientific experiments.