The Press SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1936. All's Well With Education

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21761, 18 April 1936, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1936. All's Well With Education

The report by the Director of Education tabled in the House of Representatives on Friday shows that it takes more than a trip round the world to shake the faith of an education official in his own ideas and the system he administers. Mr Lambourne was sent abroad by the Coalition Government a year ago to study education and educational administration in other countries; and it was hoped by the Government that his visit would have “great possi- “ bilities for the future progress of our educa“tion system.” If Mr Lambourne had gone abroad with an open and enquiring :-ind, this expectation might have been justified. But his report reads like the work, not of the seeker after new and useful ideas, but of the lawyer gathering materials for a defending brief. In almost every passage of his report there is patent the desire to justify the New Zealand education system and, wherever possible, to show that it has advantages over other systems. His general conclusion reveals an impervious satisfaction with things as they are which will cause despair to all who have some insight into the present state of education in New Zealand. The New Zealand system of education, primary and post-primary, is fundamentally sound, modern, and well suited to our requirements. It does not need any dractic amendment, but requires development in certain directions when, and as far as, finance will permit. It is difficult to believe that Mr Lambourne has considered the full implications of this statement. Are we to believe that it is “ fundamentally sound” to divide primary and secondary education into separate compartments and that unified control, as practised in England, is a blunder? In New Zealand two official committees of enquiry and an overwhelming body of informed opinion have urged the establishment of unified control. Is Mr Lambourne right and everyone else wrong? Is there some virtue in the present confusion of local education authorities which no one but Mr Lambourne has perceived? And is Mr Lambourne satisfied with the primary school syllabus, with the present examination system, with the text books in use, with the present status of school committees and education boards, with the complete centralisation of effective control, and with the provision for technical and vocational training? The passage we have quoted gives an affirmative answer to all these questions. It implies that the Education Department is right in all its ideas and that nothing but the expenditure of more money can effect improvements in the New Zealand education system. And it is significant that the minor adjustments in the system which Mr Lambourne does suggest are in the main designed to give greater power to the department. What is particularly difficult to understand is Mr Lambourne’s apparent inability to realise that, both among teachers and in the community as a whole, there is growing dissatisfaction with the methods employed in the schools and with the administrative machinery of education. It was this dissatisfaction which resulted in Mr Lambourne’s being sent abroad; and it will not be quieted by his bland assurances that the department is right and everyone else in error. The need for a drastic overhaul of the administrative arrangements, which are the product of haphazard growth, are obvious. There is a multiplicity of local authorities which, although they have little real power .over schools, add appreciably to the cost of administration. Either these authorities should be swept away, or effective local control, based on unification of the primary and post-primary branches, should be restored. The teachers, and public opinion in so far as it is vocal, favour decentralisation. Of the schools themselves it can fairly be said that they are too subservient to examination requirements, that there is too little variety and experiment, and that local interest in school affairs is only feebly maintained. From top to bottom, the system is dominated by a narrow and deadening insistence on mechanical efficiency. That it has its good points and that in some respects it is ahead of some other systems no one would deny. But the Director of Education was not sent abroad to discover these excellencies. He was sent abroad to discover the best line of advance; and for all that he has discovered (as disclosed in his report) he might as well have stayed at home.