The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1928. EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 31, 7 February 1928, Page 6

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

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1928. EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT.

For the oouse that tacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance And the good that tee oan do.

In a recent issue of the Christchurch '"Press" attention is drawn to some comments made by Dr. Hight upon the character of our education system and its administration. Dr. Hight, who has just returned from England, where he has been acting as exchange Professor of History at Leeds, has been much impressed by the extent to which the local authorities assert themselves in the control of education in Britain and the United States. The conditions which he describes are contrasted forcibly by the "Press" with the state of things existent in this country, where "school committees are practically functionless, while Education Boards, High School Boards, and Technical College Boards work within narrow limits, and are powerless to arrest the Department's pull toward centralisation and uniformity." \\ e have frequently protested against the strongly-marked tendency toward centralisation manifested in our Education system to-day, and as enthusiastic supporters of local self-government in every form we heartily endorse the "Press" criticism. But it is not simply the primary school system that suffers in this way. Dr. Hight has found in his observations abroad a general and widespread agreement "that universities require the utmost freedom from government control," and he expresses regret that a tendency is operating here to bring the University and its colleges under the control of the departmental authorities responsible for primary and secondary education. "Where the Government is represented abroad on governing bodies of universities," says Dr. Hight, "it is only in a very indirect way," and he suggests the inference that the less departmental control exercised over the University the better for it and for all concerned. We welcome this vigorous protest against the extension of departmental authority over our education system, and more especially over our University, on which the paralysing weight of bureaucratic administration has begun to fall.