THE WAY WITH EDUCATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 10

THE WAY WITH EDUCATION

The precise line the Government proposes to follow in its promised reform of the education system has not yet been indicated by the Minister of Education (Mr. Fraser), but he has made it sufficiently clear in his remarks at Auckland, as reported in a Press Association message today, that he is no devotee oi: the fetish of examinations. Speaking at tho Parnell School, he declared that "children should not be stuffed with information as their mothers stuff chickens for the table," that "one reform which, should haw the

support of all sensible educators is the abolition of the proficiency examination," and that "the matriculation examination is on trial today." It is clear also that the Minister has realised that diere arc vested interests in education which are apt to distract attention from the problem of the whole to secure a concentration on their own particular part. The description by certain branches of their part as "the Cinderella of the education system" the Minister roundly condemned as "not a helpful approach" and "contrary to the idea of education as a continuous whole." The problem of reform in the education system is one of the most difficult New Zealand has to face, and the Minister is wise in refusing to be stampeded by special interests into premature pronouncements. As far as possible, die question should be freed from all existing entanglements and reduced to finding out what sort of an education system New Zealand really needs and then endeavouring to work out the be3t way of attaining it widiin die means at the country's disposal. It is on those lines that educational authorities can best cooperate., il'