Educational Revolution Urged By Dr. Sutch

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31086, 15 June 1966, Page 18

Educational Revolution Urged By Dr. Sutch

New Zealand would have to revolutionise its philosophy of education if it wanted to maintain its standard of living, DrW. B. Sutch, the former Secretary of Industries and Commerce, told Canterbury University students last evening.

It would, among other things, have to abolish the school certificate examination as a yardstick of the fullness of a secondary education, and change the traditional belief that the secondary school was the place to obtain vocational training.

Dr. Sutch said it was essential for every New Zealander to receive a general education, regardless of sex or intellectual capacity. He deplored the attitude, “common in New Zealand,” which expressed itself in the statement, “He doesn’t need an education. He is going into a trade.”

Dr. Sutch said that if the notion persisted that the school certificate was the acme of achievement in education, then two-thirds of all children in secondary schools had to be regarded as failures.

Many of the 33 per cent who passed the examination were certainly not educated, because they had taken subjects such as shorthand and tvping which could only be regarded as safe options with little educational merit.

He urged that the school certificate be replaced by a certificate given to every student which stated how many years’ study had been done and what level of achievement had been reached.

The purpose of educating the whole nation was to be able to provide as many people as possible with skills which would be required in 40 years; and to give every person an appreciation of quality. Dr. Sutch said that New Zealand had built up a flourishing export business in women’s garments because a large section of New Zealand women could competently criticise the quality of the goods. Before New Zealand could expand its trade in manufactured goods it would have to be able to satisfy the home consumer about their quality. In recent years, New Zealand had leaned on migrants to produce the quality. There was a strong complex that anything made by New Zealanders was not fit for use at home and less fit for export. This attitude was a throwback to the old colonial days in which New Zealand was still wallowing. Dr. Sutch said the emerging countries of South-east

Asia had taken far bolder economic measures than New Zealand to improve their standards of living after breaking away from colonial rule. New Zealand was till recently exporting meat in its “crudest colonial form.” Countries less well endowed naturally, such as Denmark, Switzerland, and Israel, had been able to maintain their high living standards by specialising in manufactured goods. Their advantage over New Zealand was the social environment of the people and “the pervasion of quality through society.” “We won't be able to catch them, let alone keep up with them, unless we change our philosophy of education,” he said.