EDUCATION IN N.Z.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 189, 12 August 1933, Page 7

EDUCATION IN N.Z.

"BASED ON DISTRUST."

TEACHER'S INDICTMENT.

TOO MUCH MASS PRODUCTION.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) DUNEDIN, this day. A strong indictment of the New Zealand education system was made by Mr. C. Allen, a relieving teacher from London, in an address to the Educational Institute. He said he was surprised to find teachers working as well as they did under the present system, which appeared to be based on distrust. Authorities and inspectors distrusted the teachers, who in' turn distrusted the youngsters, and it seemed to him to be all due to the great god "proficiency," to which teachers had to sacrifice themselves and the children.

After all, the speaker asked, what did the proficiency examination amount to?. It meant that a successful youngster had "crammed" certain facts sufficiently well to pass a test. As regards its being a test of true education he thought it failed miserably. In his opinion the present system was striving after the unattainable, and, what was more undesirable, "mass-production" education of all youngsters throughout the Dominion —children from the country and town, children from good homes and poor homes, where, unfortunately, they were ill fed and had insufficient sleep. All were pushed on towards the same goal so that real teaching and individual work were more or less impossible. With things as they were in New Zealand, Mr Allen said, he would call the New Zealand grading system a "degrading system," savouring as it did of the old iniquitous system, of payment by results, _ """*•*■