The Dominion. THURSDAY, MARCS 24, 1938. REFORMS IN EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 152, 24 March 1938, Page 10

The Dominion. THURSDAY, MARCS 24, 1938. REFORMS IN EDUCATION

Surprise and disappointment have been expressed in some quarters that the Education Amendment Bill introduced before Parliament dispersed last week contained nothing more than proposals for administrative changes. It was expected that facilities would have been provided for giving effect to various reforms advocated by teachers and visiting experts for the improvement of teaching conditions, classroom methods, and the examination system. The changes proposed in the Bill give no guarantee that the standard and quality of New Zealand education will be any higher under the new system than under the old. It matters little what form of administration we adopt if the human element in the case is neglected. The test of an education system is the quality of its product. As far as the Bill itself is concerned, the proposed changes will have to face the fire of strong criticism from the governing bodies threatened with extinction. It will be argued, of course, that the main object of dissolving these bodies and handing over their present duties and responsibilities to the education boards of their particular districts is to bring all three departments of children’s education-; —primary schools, high schools and technical schools —into a co-ordinated whole. It has been held in the past, and we entirely agree, that one of the weaknesses of the system has been the practice of treating those three branches as if they were in watertight compartments, having no connection with each other, instead of as related parts. But this difficulty will not be solved simply by putting them all in one box. True co-ordination can only be effected through the intelligent and successful use of the intermediate school, which should be regarded as the clearing house for classifying the aptitudes and abilities of the primary school products in relation to the secondary stage of their education.

Co-ordination is a scholastic question, not an administrative one, and the problems related thereto involve a survey of syllabuses, methods of testing the qualifications of pupils, and systems of classification. Teachers rightly declare that education should be a continuous process. This principle, they argue, should be reflected in the continuity of purpose shown in the syllabuses, and the logical and carefully graded progress of the pupil from the elementary stages of his education to the higher levels. But if the principle is to be intelligently applied there should be agreement as to the fundamental aim of education. To say that education is a preparation for life is to state the truth, but the proposition cannot be left at that. What kind of life? We are constantly told that our present-day way of life is too material; that it lacks spirituality; that cleverness commands a higher premium than character. If we/fire honest we must admit the force of this indictment. It is not, either in the moral or the civic sense, a healthy way of life. The whole trend of our education system, however, culminating as it does in an examination system that fails to probe human values, that is nothing more than a memory test, prevents the younger generation from seeking and finding a better way. What people were hoping from the Minister’s prolonged, consideration of the defects of the system were proposals that would redirect its aim, involving consequential alterations in syllabuses, teaching methods, and the basis of testing human values. So much is attempted in the way of passing on information to the pupils that the simple essentials of right living and thinking do not receive sufficient attention and emphasis. Comparatively speaking, people are no better educated to-day than they were generations ago. All that has happened is that more people are being educated, but in many cases not as well educated. The amount of information available to the world has increased tremendously, far beyond the capacity of any single individual, however talented, to assimilate. All that school education should be expected to do is to provide the mental equipment for exploring this mine of information later on, and to stimulate those moral qualities that will lead the pupil to use the information thus acquired in the right way. The Bill now introduced is not without its merits, but it does not cover those aspects of education which are vital and which most urgently require attention.