Hit-Or-Miss Allegation

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32385, 26 August 1970, Page 1

Hit-Or-Miss Allegation

The New Zealand secondary school system was described in Christchurch yesterday as “a white elephant, inadequately measured in output, understaffed, under capitalised, and perhaps out of control.”

This description came from a senior lecturer at the North Shore Teachers’ College. Mr J. A Lewis, in an address during the morning session of the Geographical Society’s conference, devoted to the teaching of geography. “To understand what schools are, should be or need to do, in New Zealand society, people must consider what happens in our schools, and how is it related to what goes on in the community,” Mr Lewis said. “This means an examination of social assumptions, and of the powers outside the schools that penetrate and influence the system. “Perhaps it is this interaction of the multi-values of universities, educational theorists, employers, parents and commercial interests that has produced such a white elephant as our present system.”

Too many administrators, Mr Lewis suggested, were often more concerned with the smooth organisation and functioning of the time-table, rather than how effectively the school was achieving its educational aims.

“Though people in our schools may be the ‘salt of the earth,’ let us admit honestly that too often we operate in deep ignorance, using hit-or-miss methods in a haphazard fashion that is disastrously out of place when compared with management practices in other organisations,” he said. “More freedom for pupil and teachers is needed than is possible at present. . . . Whoever sets out to impose a sequential development of knowledge, concepts or skills In any discipline cannot ignore the effect of the student’s experience and insight; otherwise there is a tendency to assert that we know best what needs to be learnt, and when.”

Many teachers in high school had become increasingly aware that their students could not be “goaded down a racetrack” between clearly-defined lines towards the only truth, Mr Lewis said, adding:

“These teachers are realising that learning is a corporate responsibility, with considerable overlap in areas of investigation, various modes of inquiry adopted and attitudes involved. “My own belief is that geography in New Zealand schools is still struggling to emerge from an intellectual ice-age, with its emphasis on landforms, climate and agricultural classifications. “Today we are failing to recognise that human beings do not fit easily into systems, and yet it is human affairs that interest the majority of our school students, most of whom will never enter a university. ' “A change, in the high schools reflecting the increasing sensitivity of students to social issues in the community is the growth of the socalled liberal studies courses. “Perhaps this is an encouraging sign to many, but I see it is an indictment of the quality of other courses. “Surely, in English, history, geography, and even the sciences, liberal-minded teachers could encourage discussion of the implications of their subjects for human welfare in human terms? Is our normal curriculum so sick

that it needs a special ‘trace element’ called liberal studies?” Mr Lewis said that there were still too many people—and this included many schoolteachers—who judged the high schools to be autocratic institutions with outmoded academic courses geared to just a selectionprocess operating through the national examination system, and preparing the select few for university.

“If national examinations could be made to serve, rather than dominate, they would be easier to defend but •—and. many teachers have allowed this—they have imposed such restrictions on the content, method and organisation of the school that we have become conditioned to accept their influence as normal,” he added. Actor Indisposed Sir Laurence Olivier has a thrombosis and will make no stage appearances for the next two or three months, it was announced yesterday. Sir Laurence, now Lord Olivier, was admitted to a London hospital three weeks ago with bronchial pneumonia.—London, August 25.