A GRAVE DEFECT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1941, Page 4

A GRAVE DEFECT.

The nniversity is the testing ground of an educational system, and any general defect which develops there is first hand evidence of failure in the earlier stages. Professor H. G. Forder, professor of mathematics at Auckland University, has already on several occasions drawn attention to the very serious neglect of this branch of mental training. He is thoroughly qualified to -express an opinion, and the emphasis with which he has stated his conclusions and his reasons for arriving at them should have made some impression. Nothing has been done to raise the standard, but now that the justice of the professor's criticisms bas been so strongly emphasised it is, perhaps, not too much to hope that they may receive some attention in authoritative quarters. The practical demonstration has been given by the degree to which officers joining the armed forces are handicapped by the low standard of their education in mathematics. To make up the deficiency many of them are forced to spend a good proportion of the! training time and effort in ( mathematical .studies which, a secondary education should have supplied. Mathematics is a long-range subject; its progress through the primary- and secondary schools should be regulated only by the ability of the pupils to absorb the successive principles to which they are I introduced. That this progress is not achieved is clearly proved by what I Pro lessor Forder describes as the I almost incredible difference between the university entrance standards here and in England. In the Home, country, that standard is equivalent to the degree standard here, and the implied reproach against our curriculum and teaching methods is one that must be removed.