EXPERIMENT URGED IN EDUCATION

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30739, 1 May 1965, Page 16

EXPERIMENT URGED IN EDUCATION

Unless New Zealand was prepared, educationally, to risk experiment and change, the century or more of advantage that is now had over the emerging underdeveloped nations was like h to disappear in the lifetime of the present generation of children, or perhaps within the next 30 years, the chairman of the Canter - bury’ region of the New Zealand Post-Primary Teachers Associa tion (Mr H. C. Evison) said in Christchurch last evening.

Mr Evison, addressing the association's annual conference, said backwardness was a relative thing and New Zealand itself could be a backward nation half a century hence unless the education being given to its children now was the most efficient that could be devised to meet the immensely competitive world they were going to live in. “We have to look keenly at new ideas, to see whether they can do anything for us,” he said. The Form 1 to V! school, proposed by the Currie Commission, was exactly such an idea, he said. It was intended to provide for an earlier start to secondary school work, so as to reach a higher standard at the end of it. Form 1 To Form VI

Mr Evison said the association had on many occasions expressed support for this recommendation for a form I to VI school system and an intermediate-secondary school system, to be proceeded with side by side, the former to be predominantly in the country districts and the latter in the cities.

Yet the form I to VI programme had got bogged down. For some strange reason the opposition to this programme had made the question appear to be simply an issue of form I to VI, for or against—as if those who support the idea were proposing to sweep away the whole established school system and replace it with a new one, said Mr Evison. He said the needs of the country schools and the immediate practicability of introducing form I to VI education there without delay had been obscured by stormy protests against form I to VI schools in or near cities. No Logical Argument “There has been no logical argument advanced yet, either before the commission or since, why the Form I to VI programme in the country schools should not be proceeded with forthwith, whatever policy Is followed in the towns. “Yet in the three years since the commission reported, only seven or eight Form I to VI schools have been announced, and no Form I to VI secondary departments at all.” said Mr Evison.

There was no purpose in trying to apportion blame for such painfully slow progress. It was sufficient to say that it had been the result of confusion or indifference—and “pretty much of the latter.”

Mr Evison said in the Canterbury district the officers of the Education Board and Education Department were doing the best they could with the resources they had to work with. Such changes as had been spoken of were matters of national policy and might only be instituted from higher up. Persuade The Public “They would require ministerial approval; but it is fairly clear in a democratic society that no Cabinet can be expected to institute new policy unless the public appears to want it. The problem is then, to persuade the public that the changes we want are necessary’,” he said. He believed the job of cutting the “Gordian Knot of public indifference” to education lay with the teachers themselves, said Mr Evison. “No-one knows more about education than the teachers responsible for it, and no-one is closer to the realities of education and the needs of

the children than the teacher tn the classroom. With the best will in the world administrators cannot know those problems as closely as the classroom teacher,” he said. Mr Evison said he could see no other way of making New Zealanders education-con-scious than for teachers to get out and proselytise for education. Enthusiasm "Spent” The increasing apathy shown at school committee elections was only one of the many signs that the great wave of enthusiasm for education in New Zealand which accompanied 19th century lib eralism and socialism, and shown a brief revival after the war, was spent. Mr Evison said New Zealand set up commissions and asked for the advice of experts but not much importance seemed to be attached to them.” We New Zealanders may be happy to stay as we are, without any change: but the world around us is changing and nothing we can do will stop it.” “If there is so little interest in education in this country that we dare not even men-

tion the word ‘education’ in a recruiting advertisement for teachers it may be inferred that new proposals for education in this country are likely to fall on deaf ears,” said Mr Evison. Joint Committee Mr Evison suggested that the conference propose the setting up of a joint committee in Christchurch of the New Zealand Educational In stitute and the New Zealand Post-Primary Teachers' Association to meet once a term and discuss matters of common interest. Such a committee could play an important part in assisting New Zealand towards a more responsible attitude to education in the difficult years which lay ahead. Mr S. W. Gower, a representative of the Canterbury Education Board, sought the support of the association in seeking to have a new teachers’ college close to the University at Ilam. This was necessary, he said, because of the inadequacy of the present accommodation and pending the introduction of third-year training and the natural expansion this would bring about.