Call For More Emphasis On Quality Teaching

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30130, 14 May 1963, Page 15

Call For More Emphasis On Quality Teaching

New Zealand had to place more emphasis on quality, efficiency, and the pursuit of excellence if it was to hold its own in a world where most complex and wealthy states were advancing at an extremely rapid pace, Mr W. R. Familton, president of the New Zealand Educational Institute, said in his address to the eightieth annual meeting of the institute in Wellington yesterday.

’’We must pay more alien, tion to the education of the labour force from the managerial level down.” said Ma Familton.

With no great supplies of raw material, with only a small local market, and with no rich heritage of skills as are possessed by industrial workers in advanced European countries. New Zealand must build up a labour force highly educated so as to be adaptable and resourceful, and must also develop technical and managerial skills of a high order.

Increased interest in •education by the press and the public had shown that a quality education was expected. and Naw Zealand could afford to pay for the education service it desired, Mr Familton said. In the reaction against the bld narrowly academic aims of schools the pendulum had undoubtedly swung too far, and was only now returning to equilibrium, said Mr Familton.

Part of the trouble had been t>he tendency of some inspeotors to be too preoccupied with new ideas and theories rather than with standards of achievement. But if the class had a good attitude towards its work and high standards were being achieved, teachers should not be criticised fpr not following a' particular pattern of teaching, said Mr Familton. No school could defend its failure to develop the intellectual powers of its pupils by pointing instead to their physical, moral, or social well-being. If schools were not developing their children academically to their fullest extent they were failing. “The wide range of subjects in the primary school makes it, in my opinion difficult for teachers to deal with all of them satisfactorily,” he added. “Areas of the curriculum such as music, art, drama, physical education, and perhaps even science that require special personal qualities as well as great skill and enthusiasm for their successful teaching should no longer be regarded as the responsibility of every teacher. “The multitude of tasks every teacher is expected to excel at is, I am sure, a deterrent in recruitment to those who would be excellent teachers but who have no ability or interest in all subjects.

“Quality teaching depends on quality teachers If teachers have wide background of knowledge. if they have their own mystique. the distinctive body of knowledge and experience of trained scholars, they will achieve status and unity in the way that doctors and lawyers have done and they will undertake tasks in the classroom more effectively.”