Need For Changes In Curriculum Seen

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31151, 30 August 1966, Page 16

Need For Changes In Curriculum Seen

The proper balance of the curriculum was perhaps the greatest issue in education today, said the president (Mr M. Hewitson) in an address to the biennial conference of the Australasian Association of Institutes of Inspectors of Schools yesterday. Mr Hewitson, director of secondary education in New Zealand, spoke on “The Developing Curriculum,” the theme of the conference, which will last until next Tuesday.

“The need for curriculum changes should be recognised by the community as well as by educational authorities,” he said. Great changes were taking place in society, in an age of specialisation. Concepts were complex, and needed greater application and intelligence to comprehend. Air travel linked different cultures more directly. Values, standards, and morality were said to be changing. Change In Emphasis “Emphasis in education has shifted from teaching a subject to helping a child to grow and develop. Human relations have never been more important in the school and the world. , “The school has had to face the challenge of preparing the child fully for life, since the Church makes an impact on a limited number of homes, and too many parents in deteriorating home situations provide little security and guidance for their children,” Mr Hewitson said. “We find a shelving of responsibility by parents, but an all-too-ready willingness on the part of some police and

traffic officers that schools should punish pupils for breaches committed. How does a school deal with drink, haircuts, traffic offences, and shoplifting? Where do attitudes and ethics fit into the curriculum?”

Referring to the twentiethcentury “explosion of knowledge,” he said: “In thinking of the problem of overloading the curriculum, we should 1 think of the powers we want to develop in pupils, the powers we want them to develop for themselves.”

Dogmatic and abstract teaching had to be abolished. Pupils should be trained for action in all fields, including that of thought. "There should be no division of knowledge,” Mr Hewitson said. “People are endowed with sensitivity towards the arts, and a factual interest these days in science, however lay it be, or even amateur.” Education was successful when it found a niche for the pupil where he could make a contribution to the community and derive a sense of achievement from doing so. “Education fails if it does not produce citizens of value to the community,” he said.

Conference delegates from beyond Christchurch were welcomed to the city by the Mayor (Mr G. Manning) at a civic reception in the council chambers yesterday afternoon. Greetings on behalf of the Department of Education were extended by the Direc-tor-General of Education (Dr. K. J. Sheen).