PARKINSON OUT-PARKINED

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33253, 16 June 1973, Page 10

PARKINSON OUT-PARKINED

Explorations In Educational Administration. Editors: W. G. Walker, A. R. Crane and A. Ross-Thomas. 433 pp. University of Queensland Press.

(Reviewed by

G.S.T.)

The 28 men and one woman who worked together on this book have said most of what can be said about tunning schools in our time. They show how ideas have come on in the last 10 years, and how they are likely to keep going on in the next 10. They discuss how big schools should be, whether the Pope would let children and teachers run their own show, how the different levels and types of schools can best live together, and what is the right place for outsiders in running schools or school districts. They have good suggestions on plans and tests

and new ideas they or their students have tried. To show how these features have worked, they have a lot <>f dear sketches, tables and graphs. Thi book is a bit long, but if the reader will just translate it into English, as the reviewer has tried to do. it will he found to come down to just a nice length.

The language used in most of the essavs is not so simple as that in the foregoing summary, far from it. The educational jargon, polysyllabic and pseudo-scientific, escalates from the title page until the penultimate contribution. And it is not only the language that is pseudo-scientific. The prevalent aim is to jump on the scien tific bandwagon and restructure education from a humanistic enterprise to a technological one. This leads to frantic searches for yardsticks to measure educational achievement, and. which is even worse, to a purging from educa tion of those aims and values which are not readily and uniformly measurable. The result is a frenzy of bureau cratic and linguistic escalation which would rejoice the heart of Eupues, and might well make any north-bound bull jealous for the pre-eminence of his southerly emanations. One is moved to cry, with D. H. Lawrence, “Come down, little Moses, from Mount Pisgah, and grasp a handful or two of the earth of promised land!” For land and earthy promise are indeed to be found towards the end of this dizzy-pretentious volume. Our own John E. Watson shows us that there is some balance and diligence in the New Zealand educational field, and the prophetic essay with which Andrew W. Halpin, of the University of Georgia, concludes the series, is pure humanistic gold, and worth the price of the book, not excessive in view of its bulk and amusement value to anv linguist, for its own sake alone. Here are wisdom, insight and foresight, and a defiant courage and will to stand for the value of the human person, student or educational tsar, against the Moloch of technology that menaces it with obliteration.