TECHNICAL COLLEGES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 191, 11 May 1938, Page 15

TECHNICAL COLLEGES

Their Function In The

Community

PLANNING NEW COUHSES OF WORK I ‘‘ls technical education, as it has developed in New Zealand, really under- ’ stood either by our worst critics or our would die best friends?” asked 51 r. L. IL It. Denny, M.A., P.1t.11.5., in his presidential address at the opening of the annual conference of the Technical School Teachers’ Association in Wellington yesterday. “Year after year visitors, especially to the large colleges on their open days, tire heard to remark that they had no conception of the scope and complexity of the work they undertake, especially in the evening departments. Their rapid growth and their popularity has drawn criticism on them, as though this in itself wtrs a ground of complaint. ‘‘They are, all of them, comparatively recent; none existed before 1900, and they did not attain technical high school status until 1914. They grew up as a protest against the dominance of. post-primary education by the academic high school. “As day schools they have multilateral courses in agriculture, engineering trades, building and allied trades, commerce and home science,' and they prepare some students for a considerable range of external examinations for those courses. They insist that the basic elements of a? general education shall occupy a considerable part of all courses, while permitting a gradual specialisation in the second, third and following years. Their Special Task. “It is their special task to cater for the large proportion of non-academic but still very capable students at the post-primary stage. They are not trade schools, they are not narrowly technical in the sense that they have in mind preparation for any one particular trade or industry. They arre designed to test the fitness of the pupil for the calling he proposes to follow, to give opportunities for acquiring the knowledge and skill that will both lay the foundation for future success and enable him to find pleasure in his work. They endeavour to cultivate tastes that will, when school days are past, give zest to the occupations of leisure hours and provide abiding interests. They aim to foster the development of the student as a social being, with an intelligent interest in public affairs; and by the means of physical culture and games to ensure that all-round development which is the essential of a wellbalanced education. They owe their success to their break with the academic tradition, to the fact that they are responsive to the needs of our community, and their students are keen because at the age of adolescence many boys and girls are immensely stimulated by the new interest which applied science and the handling of tools and materials provides. “It is further a function of a technical college, while taking' the rank and file of pupils as far as they can reasonably go, to wmteh the needs of those gifted students for whom higher technical education is eminently desirable and to whom the university is not available. This applies specially to senior students in the evening school. “The practical achievement of those aims presents problems peculiar to our type of school. On the physical side I believe it is generally true to say that girls are better catered for than boys. We’ are remedying this by degrees, but there yet remains the need for physical culture specialists, particularly men, and of recruiting them on to our staffs, and I believe there is, too, a very real need for a school to have . access to a skilled medical adviser for guidance, both physical and psychological. It may be argued that this is a matter for individual schools to deal with; I am concerned to draw attention to the need. Problems of Curriculum.

“I believe that if we paid more attention to the psychology of individual differences we should find considerable help in our endeavour to understand pupils. We do not begin to know our pupils, whether in day or evening classes, until we know how much work they have to do before and after school, what their medical history is, their worries, their hobbies, their interests, and their aspirations; how often they go to the cinema; and what they read when they are.free to choose for them/selves. Nor can pupil study be divorced from the content of the curriculum. “I believe one of the major tasks facing the whole teaching service Is a profound rethinking of the curriculum-and Its content. The traditional classification and content of subjects die hard, and satisfactory alternatives which will unify, the work throughout the pupil’s school life, both primary and ’)<>st-prlmary, are not easy to discover. Few subjects would be more fruitful of healthy discussion within our own association, and in co-operation with other associations. We have it in our power to contribute materially to the planning of new dynamic courses of work in which much that is at present detached and unrelated to any central theme will fall into place and' take on now meaning. I know that some of our members are already earnestly engaged on one phase or another of this ■problem. I hope more will take it up. Art, and Education. “Some of us have had an education which, at least in its earlier stages, either ignored art completely or admitted 11 only as an appalling travesty of drawing. 'Times have changed and gradually a new and sounder approach is coming. We have to cast aside all the conventional meaningless phraseology

about art. We have somehow to reach a new standpoint, ‘invading every classroom and every subject, reinterpreting art as an indispensable element without which al] moral training is too rigid, all physical training too dogged, and all intellectual training too stolid.’ We lack standards of criticism, our musical sensibilities are dulled into unconsciousness by a perpetual background of noise; as a community we fail to use the radio intelligently, taking the line of least resistance; we let the finest films go by and rush the spectacular and melodramatic; we are at the mercy of advertising media; we are most of us bewildered at an art exhibition. What Is Needed. “What is needed? Is it.not a functional approach to art; a return to the practical arts and crafts to learn from them the essential relations of art to social life and progress? Laws of good proportion can be inculcated quite early by manual training of an eleinetary kind, zls the child develops and begins to know something of history he can be shown how all the fine arts in a healthy society come from the humble crafts. He can learn, from Gothic architecture, for instance, how changes of what is called style are primarily a matter of engineering logic. He can see, under suitable guidance, that all mere application of ornament for its own sake is vicious. He can be made to grasp the cardinal law, not less true for machlneeraft than for handicraft, that materials must never be forced against the nature of their own being. So we can tiring home the idea that taste is not a matter of caprice, but an appreciation of standards which involve deeply both human character and social welfare. “Children have often a keener sense of what is in good taste in design and ornament and are more direct in their reasons than we realise; often I hey can outshine adults. Nowhere is free

dom, the right atmosphere, and wise guidance more necessary than in die art departments of our schools. Nowhere can co-operation and encouragement be more productive of good : in creating new interest in die muldl'arous activities of the schoolroom : and in providing those canons of criticism which were never more necessary than now.”