EDUCATION AUTHORITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1937, Page 6

EDUCATION AUTHORITY

VISIT TO DOMINION

NUMEROUS PROBLEMS

Professor 1. L. Kandel, professor of education and associate in the International Institute of Teachers' College, Columbia University,, and a leading authority on the study of comparative education, will . visit New Zealand early in June, to participate in the New Education Fellowship Conference to study the Dominion system of education. He will be accompanied by his wife, who also has high academic honours.

At Victoria University of Manchester, in 1902, Professor Kandel 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, Johns Hopkins University, and College of the City of New Yoi'k. As lecturer Dr. Kandel has won fame as Joseph Payne lecturer at the University of London and Inglis lecturer at Harvard University.

For nine years he was staff member ■of the Carnegie Foundation for the | Advancement of Teaching, and is at j 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 Kandel 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 Cyclopaedia of Education, revising editor to the education section of.the New International Encyclopaedia, departmental editor for the education section of the National Encyclopaedia, and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Among his numerous publications are "Essays on Comparative Education," "Dilemma of Demo.cracy," "Comparative Education," and "The Making of Nazis." LOOKING AHEAD. 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 md 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 bo brought up by*its moth>; 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 if the effect of class numbers on the progress of pupils: if fees are introduced or mr creased in secondary' schools, then parents will better appreciate that for which they pay. ihowever 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. SWING OF PENDULUM. ' "So long as education is dependentupon 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,; frbm'hope to: disillusion' and back again. What is significant,] if one views the problem in its broader j 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 over-production of the intellectually trained, that differentiation is necessary to a. far greater degree than has J 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 r a ll must be qualified, by further inter-, pretations of the meaning of secondary education. The problem is too complicated to be solved by one method ■alone; it will require the co-opera-■tion of statesmen, economists, sociologists, psychologists; and educators." '