EDUCATION PROBLEMS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 130, 26 February 1937, Page 8

EDUCATION PROBLEMS

Leading Authority to Visit

New Zealand

PROFESSOR I. L. KANDEL

It was announced yesterday that Professor 1. L. Kandel will visit New Zealand early in June to participate in the New Education Fellowship conference to study our system of education. Professor of education and associate in the International Institute at Teachers’ College, Columbia University, he is the leading authority on the study of comparative education. At Victoria University of Manchester, in 1902. he received first-class classical honours and master of arts degree and teachers’ diploma in 1906, In 1907 he studied at the University of Jena, and in 1910 took his doctorate of philosophy at Columbia University. New York. His career began as assistant classical master at the Royal Academical Institution at Belfast, but shortly after taking his doctorate he became lecturer and associate at Teachers’ College, Columbia. Since 1923 he has been professor of education in the International Institute- at Columbia University. As visiting lecturer he has had appointments at the University of California, Pennsylvania. John Hopkins University, and College of the City of New York. As lecturer Dr. Kandel has won fame as Joseph Payne lecturer at University of London and Inglis lecturer at Harvard University. For nine years he was staff member of tlie Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and is at present chairman of the committee of the United States Office of Education on Comparative Education, member of the National Education Association, and member of the editorial board of the “Educational Forum.” Professor Kan del is probably best known to New Zealand as editor of the Educational Year Book of the International Institute of Teachers’ College, Columbia University., He was assistant editor for Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, revising editor to the education section of the New International Encyclopedia, departmental editor for the education section of the National Encyclopedia, and contributor to .the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Among his numerous publications are “Essays on Comparative Education,” “Dilemma of Democracy,” "Comparative Education,” and “The Making of Nazis.”

A New Awakening.

Professor Kandel’s study necessitates a thorough and philosophical insight into systems as they operate today. His task is to forecast the future from the evidence given by past and present institutions. "To those who are more impressed by the obstacles confronting the progress of education than by actual achievement,” he says, "it may seem the height of folly to attempt to look into the future. Faced by economic conditions over which they have no control educators and administrators must make a virtue of necessity and derive what comfort they can by rationalising on the curtailments imposed upon them. Thus, if nursery schools and kindergartens are closed, the argument runs, it is better for the young child to be brought up by its mother; if the size of classes is increased, then it is better for the pupils to profit from the stimulus of larger numbers, and in any case little is known of the effect of class numbers on the progress of pupils; if fees are introduced or increased in secondary schools, then parents will better appreciate that for which they pay, however little that may be. Such conditions and rationalisations are -not limited to any one country, but it is not necessary as a consequence to jump at the conclusion'that education has suffered a setback from which it will never recover.

“So long as education is dependent upon conditions which it cannot control, a situation which is inevitable, despite those who would claim autonomy for education, the pendulum must inevitably swing from optimism to pessimism, from hope to disillusion and back again. What is significant, if one views the problem in its broader setting, is that there has been a new awakening and a new interest in education.

“The world is entering on a new era in the field of post-primary education; all that is clear is that there may be an overproduction" of the intellectually trained, that differentfation is necessary to a far greater degree than has been attempted, that examinations as now conducted, while they may serve as a stimulus to pupils and as a check on the teachers, are unsatisfactory as a method of selection, and that the demand for secondary education for all must be qualified by further interpretations of tbe meaning of secondary education. The problem is too complicated to be solved by one method alone: it will require the co-operation of statesmen, economists, sociologists, psychologists find educators." Professor Kandel will be accompanied by his wife, who also has high academic honours. (Photograph on page 9.)