EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22533, 15 October 1938, Page 20

EDUCATIONAL REFORM

FAULTS OF NEW ZEALAND ADMINISTRATION Types of Administration, with Particular Reference tcv the Educational Systems of 'New Zealand and Australia. By I. L. Kandel. New Zealand Council for Educational Research. 93 pp. When Dr. Kandel was in New Zealand a year ago he indicated quite plainly what .he had observed to be the faults of our educational system. His considered opinions confirm his first impressions. No one can speak with greater authority or cogency than Dr. Kandel. Before all else, he declares, administration must be reformed, and from that other reforms will flow. Administrators have confounded centralisation with bureaucracy and have placed a premium on that kind of efficiency which conforms. Outside the State schools there is very little more originality and experiment, for the private schools, willingly or by pressure of public examinations, adhere to the regulation pattern. Inspectors have no time to learn to be original administrators or educational leaders, and there are no agencies to awaken public opinion, no societies or organisations to promote among laymen and teachers an intelligent public interest in education. These broad conclusions shape themselves for Dr. Kandel after a critical analysis of several types of education: education for conformity in the totalitarian States, education for solidarity in France, education for adaptation in the United States and England, and education for efficiency in New Zealand and Australia. The pace of reform in New Zealand education is very slow. The visiting leaders of the Education Fellowship of 1937 tried to hasten the pace, and Dr. Kandel has continued his excellent work by his very brief, but impressive, study of various types of administration. New Zealand's is not the best, and can readily be improved, even by studying the models outlined by Dr. Kandel.