FOUND DEFICIENT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 245, 16 October 1944, Page 6

FOUND DEFICIENT

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES

A large Auckland firm has found it necessary to employ a suitably qualified member of its staff to teach the elementary processes of simple arithmetic, legible writing and correct spelling to boys and girls joining its staff after two or three yeais secondary education. Lessons are conducted in the employer's time and are each of half an hour or more duration, according to the subject. Two or three classes are held each morning, and are arranged to avoid a large number of employees being away from any one department at the same time. A representative of the firm, the Farmers , Trading Co Ltd., stated this morning that it took about three months to bring these employees up to the standard required. He commented that when children left primary school they could write, but when they went to secondary school they started to scribble. The firm had found that they had to train their new young employees to write legibly to avoid orders going to the wrong persons or wrong addresses, or the wrong goods being sent out as a result of the dispatch department or the order hands not being able to read the orders.

The system of teaching spelling phonetically was criticised. The firm found its employees new from secondary school spelt everything as it sounded. For instance, Meadowbank was spet '-Medowbank," despite the fact that the word was seen on tram signs many times a day. Courtesy was spelt "curtesy," and so on.

So far as arithmetic was concerned it was found that about two out of seven could make out correctly a sales docket containing six or seven different lines, such as six pounds of a commodity at 3Jd a lb.

The classes have been held for several years. A specially fitted room has been set up as a class room, and the lessons are attended *by all the young "new employees." "Highly Disturbing" Commenting' on the action of the firm the Associated Chambers of Commerce of N.Z., in a statement, said: "This evidence of deficiency in New Zealand's education system is highly disturbing and should be closely examined at the national education conference, called by the -Government, which is to be held in Christchurch this month. So far, however, there is no provision on the agenda for discussion of this very important aspect of our educational system." A substantial decline in the quality of the average pupil leaving school had been widely observed over recent years, and commercial people felt this was due in no small measure to the reduced emphasis on such subjects as English and arithmetic, which had given way to an increase in emphasis on a wide range of loosely defined subjects where less concentration and effort ■ were required, the statement continued.

"The net result is that too much attention has been given to training for culture and leisure and too little attention to training for work and thought processes. If education is the training for life, then, whatever the future holds in store, work will continue to be important, because it is an essential part of life. Moreover, it seems futile to raise the compulsory school leaving age to 15 years if the young people learn no more than they previously did at 13 or 14 years of age.

"Theue is also the fact that the present educational system does not teach people how to think. There is an obvious lack of training in fundamentals which spells inefficiency in the schools and a lack of real educational ideals in the Education Department. This does not mean the present system of education has no merits—it definitely has —but there can be no real training in thought processes if good, sound foundations .are not laid."