The Press TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1944. A Conference On Education

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24194, 29 February 1944, Page 4

The Press TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1944. A Conference On Education

The Governor-General’s speech at the opening of Parliament contained an announcement that a national conference on education would be held this year to consider, among other things, the further provision of pre-school facilities for children under five, the provision of more leisure time activities for the adolescent, and adult education. The statement in which the Minister of Education has now elaborated this announcement cannot be said to have made it at all clear what such a conference can achieve. As long ago as last September the Minister invited “ all bodies and persons “ with views to express to prepare “ schemes and reports embodying “ their proposals for post-war plan- “ ning in education.” He now asks that the schemes and reports be sent in by May 31 to the Education Department, which wilt circulate them (in full or summarised) to the conference delegates. The conference itself will be held some time in August and will last not more than four days. The obvious comment on this procedure is that a conference at which dozens, perhaps scores, of delegates will assemble cannot hope to discuss adequately in four days even one of the topics set down for consideration. Still less can it be expected to sift the reports and schemes which will be submitted to it. It amounts to this: either the Minister has not thought at all carefully about the purpose of the conference, or he proposes to use it as a means of getting a show of popular assent to plans which are already cut-and-dried. Passages in the Minister’s statement support the second hypothesis. He will himself, he says, ‘tell the conference “something of plans for the future”; the delegates will have “ a full op- “ portunity of discussing these “plans and of themselves putting “ forward suggestions ” —the Minister’s idea of a “full opportunity” being, presumably, a day or so of the conference’s time. Again, the Minister says that “ in no branch of “ a country’s activities is it more “ important that the country as a “whole should know what the “ Government is doing than in edu- “ cation.” The meaning of this seems to be that the conference will provide a stage-setting for a policy statement on education. It will be able to talk about this policy and offer “suggestions”; but the real decisions will already have been made. What, then, of the “schemes and reports” which are being prepared by individuals and organisations interested in education? These, presumably, will be sifted by the Minister’s advisers—that is, by the Education Department —in the two months between the closing date for receiving them and the opening of the conference. It is thus difficult to avoid the conclusion that the conference, far from being a »means of throwing open to popular discussion the mam issues of education policy, is in fact an ingenious device to invest the actions of the Minister and his department with an appearance of democratic procedure. If the Minister sincerely wishes the views of competent persons and organisations throughout the country to have their due weight in the shaping of education policy, he should set up a Royal Commission on Education. The Royal Commission is the best instrument democracy has yet devised for throwing open a policy issue to discussion by any person or organisation with an opinion worth hearing. It gives each person and organisation a fair and a public hearing and an opportunity to argue disputed points. The method the Minister of Education has devised has none of these merits.