PUBLIC SYMPATHY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 134, 8 June 1935, Page 10

PUBLIC SYMPATHY

NEW ZEALAND SCHOOLS

CLEANLINESS AND CURRICULA

The report in the Press a few days ago concerning the cleaning of schools, containing a reference to a certain South Island school as being "a dirty dungeon," was the subject of comment today by Professor W. H. Gould, Professor of Education at Victoria University College.

"As regards the cleaning side of the question," he said, "the position appears to be—in Wellington, at least—that the school committees are given an allowance by the Education Board to cover all expenses connected with the school. That these allowances are totally inadequate appears from the frequent complaints of the committees themselves and of the Women Teachers' Association. There can be nothing more important in the education of the children than that the surroundings should be healthy and clean, but far too often the classrooms are dirty and insufficiently lighted, while the children are crowded into rooms too small to accommodate them properly. Great advances have been made in the past few years in these respects, but our schools do not compare with those in either America or England." THE EXAMINATION SYSTEM. What he described as "the bugbear of all teachers and educationists," the present examination system, Professor Gould described as totally out of alignment with the true aims of education. Not only did examinations put an undue and even dangerous strain on the physical organism of boys and girls of all ages, and especially during puberty, but a warped and starved mental outlook and stultified development resulted. Examinations allowed no scope for the development of individuality of the child, which'was the fundamental aim of education. They so completely dominated the education system that the unfortunate child came out of his school with a stock of knowledge that bore no relation to his actual experience or activity in life, and that consisted in the main of inert ideas. This was not the fault of the teachers, he continued, but of the system, which forced them to conform to an arbitrary standard, and to the inadequate classification of pupils in the schools. This led to the question whether the New Zealand public were . sufficiently alive to the needs of their children in the school. The educational system was at fault, but if there were sufficient public demand for an amelioration of the environment of the children and the improvement of the curriculum by broadening it and increasing its scope and contact with the experience and life of the child himself, this improvement would take place. It would seem, said Professor Gould, that education must begin with the older generation. NEW ZEALAND FAtLEN BEHIND.

"New Zealand," he concluded, "once prided herself on being a leader in educational movements, but she has now fallen far behind England and America. There is nothing more important for the future of this, country than that her children should be better and more widely educated, and the people should realise their responsibility to the future of the race."