Xavier College Head On Overseas Schools

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30294, 21 November 1963, Page 13

Xavier College Head On Overseas Schools

“There is very little I would change in this country,” said the director of Xavier College (Brother Maurice), speaking of his recent nine-month tour of I overseas schools. Although overseas academic standards were at times hig h :r, New Zealand education made more demands in a broader philosophy of education, and demanded more of the pupil in a broad educational sense and in social, physical, and cultural education than school systems overseas, Brother Maurice said. For example, a senior pupil at Xavier College led a school life much fuller in every respect to anything he had j seen overseas except in the United States. After attending a religious course at Fribourg. Switzerland. for five months, Brother Maurice visited Italy, France, Holland. Ireland, Scotland, the United States, and Australia. He visited a crosssection of private and State schools in most countries. “I saw the old and new methods,” he said. Although he could see the value of the more rigid and authoritarian attitude, seen especially on ( the Continent, he would not | like it in New Zealand. As for the opposite extreme, seen in the new methods of the United States, “there is a growing opinion that responsibility towards the community is just as important as self-expression, and that free activity, the play-way, and self-expression are not the fashionable cliches they used to be. There is a tendency now that incentives to work are just as paramount as self-1 expression and free activity.” Swiss Schools Two things which had struck him about the Swiss school system, he said, were the greater demands in time placed on the pupils, and the special attention shown to upper-stream students in secondary’ schools. Swiss schools had a much more rigid curriculum than that in New Zealand, and all schools were open on Saturday mornings. Pupils worked an average of about 30 hours a week, compared with 25 in this country. Swiss schools were faced with a difficulty in classifiation, as many children in the mountains were “winter bound” for several months, and “farmlabour bound” for some weeks. This led to education being sporadic, and many were late learners. Although schools were run on a canton (provincial) system, all displayed a strong Swiss national characteristic, a factor greatly influenced by an emphasis on mountain sports. The Swiss Government supplied equipment and money to encourage this. At a new school on the shores of Lake Geneva a mountain sports, forestry, and camping were included. ( in the syllabus. Campjng! trips of several weeks were ■ run, very much like the Out-1

ward Bound School activities in New Zealand. Education in the narrow sense as the key to the vocational door was much more valued overseas than in New Zealand, Brother Maurice said. This w’as very evident in the United States, where the standards were very high, and the competitive demands of vocational opportunity demanded hard work. In such a system the prize went to the fittest, but the "great medium group” suffered. In this group the sheer weight of numbers broke down the high standards.