NEW APPROACH TO EDUCATION URGED

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30480, 30 June 1964, Page 14

NEW APPROACH TO EDUCATION URGED

New Zealanders were suspicious of change, suspicious of experts, and suspicious of innovations, Mr H. C. Evison, senior lecturer in the post-primary section of the Christchurch Teachers’ College, told a special meeting at Sumner last evening which had been called to consider latest developments in the proposal to establish a Form I to VI high school to serve the south-eastern suburbs. “We all like to read that New Zealand leads the world educationally, but this has never been true,” said Mr Evison, who attended the meeting as a resident of the district. “We are not a people much given to experiment and change. A nation that has everything it wants, or. very nearly, is apt to be conservative. I think we are a very conservative country. We may set up commissions, and ask for the evidence of experts, but at the same time we do not take their opinions very much to heart.

“All. this perhaps is fair enough. We rely on common sense, and prefer to stick to what we have, rather than change it for something newfangled. It is common in nature to guard one’s young against the strange unknown: so in education it is natural if we hesitate to turn our children over to a new school system. “But against our natural reluctance to change, we have to , set whatever evidence there is that change may be necessary,” Mr Evison said. Changes Overseas

“One such change that is going on overseas is the great awakening of the world’s under-developed peoples, among whom education is just getting under way. People who have been in those countries will tell you of the tremendous enthusiasm and thirst for education there. Thus the century or more of advantage that we now have over those countries educa-

tionally is going to disappear in our children’s lifetime: we may even slip behind, 30 or 40 years hence, unless we, too,, are prepared to risk experiment and change.” “The Form MV school is exactly such an idea. It is intended to provide for an earlier start to secondary school work, so as to reach, a higher standard at the end of it. That is to say, in practical terms,, that whatever subjects a child will be taking at secondary school—for example, mathematics, science, or French—he will have a better chance of passing school certificate, or of going on to university, if he begins work on them in Form I.” Post-Primary School Mr Evison said he thought no post-primary school could be built in the area before 1968.

“Of course, if you decide against a Form I to VI school, you will not get the authorities to agree to a postprimary school at this juncture because the present rolls will not justify it. That is why the Post-primary Schools’ Council left this area out of its plans for schools between now and 1980,” he said.

He suggested that if boarding facilities were made available at the new school, the roll could be increased.

The secretary of. the Postprimary Schools’ Council (Mr P. J. Halligan) said a hostel with fewer than 80 boarders would be considered uneconomic. He doubted whether that number could be gathered for the proposed school. The meeting, which was attended by representatives of school committees in the district and seven members of the public, decided after hearing Mr Evison’s address to ask the school committees concerned to consider the desirability of establishing a Form I to VI school with a hostel in the area.