WHITHER EDUCATION?

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 189, 9 May 1934, Page 8

WHITHER EDUCATION?

Importance of Vision and Clear Thinking ADDRESS BY DIRECTOR The need for preparedness to meet the changing conditions that were arising was stressed by the Director of Education, Mr. N. T. Lambourne, in an address yesterday to the annual conference of the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Association. The familiar landmarks were disappearing, he said, and in the setting up of new ones the teacher would have to play a very large part. Perhaps at no time had there been a greater need for vision and clear thinking and unselfishness than there «as to-day, Mr. Lambourne said. Recently listeners in Great Britain had been entertained by a series of lectures entitled “Whither England?” He thought it was a case to-day, “Whither Education?” The lecturers at Home were .men and women eminent in their own particular lines and with different political and social outlooks, but they seemed to pretty well all agree that the British people had to press forward to a future very different from the past—a future with new problems and new outlooks. They were all in agreement that practically everything would depend upon the road that was chosen. Needs of the Pupil. Mr. Lambourne said that a great deal had been done in New Zealand to fit the course to the needs of the pupil. Financial considerations made it difficult to advance as quickly as some would like, but that was no reason for not considering carefully how to meet the new conditions that were arising. That, he took it, was what the conferences now meeting in Wellington would do. “Some of the changes ‘will perhaps be dealt with without delay,” Mr. Lambourne continued. ‘To wbat extent can the course be still further differentiated? The secondary schools have extended their courses to provide more suitable requirements for the various types of pupils, but is it possible or desirable to differentiate still further? What provision 'can or could be made for vocational guidance? Is vocational guidance a desirable thing? Has it worked out where it has been tried? Have the boys and girls been helped permanently by the guidance that has been offered them? What are we doing, or what do we propose to do. to enable boys and girls to use profitably . the increasing amount of leisure it seems almost certain they will have during their working lives?” Those. Mr. Lambourne said, were only two or three points that occurred to him. He added: “We are more or less at the crossroads, and the next five or ten years will see greater changes than perhaps many of us can at the moment imagine. It is our duty to prepare ourselves for the changes that are sure to come.”