REFORM AT THE TOP

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 21, 25 January 1940, Page 10

REFORM AT THE TOP

It cannot be said that the new accrediting system proposed as a passport of entrance to the University of New Zealand by the University Senate has roused much enthusiasm among persons affected, unless it is in scholastic circles. While the ordinary University Entrance Examination (Matriculation) has proved obnoxious to many educational authorities over a long term of years, the accrediting system, as an alternative, does not seem to fill the bill. A letter by "Parent" in "The Post" last Saturday emphasised the argument that the proposal would "involve the country in large additional expenditure and increase the burden of most parents with children^ at college." The grievance in this case is that children must, under the new proposal, be "kept at college for at least four years," whereas "at present it is possible for a child to sit for the matriculation examination after three years at a college or high school, and large numbers are successful." This is quite true, but it cannot be assumed that this fact—of children passing "matric." at fourteen or fifteen years of age—is either good for thera o.r for the community

at large, or that it constitutes the ideal of education parents should seek to give their children. Having passed the necessary examination the successful candidate may, and often does, enter the University at an age far too young for the curriculum, sometimes with disastrous effects later from overstudy. The gap between the courses in the secondary schools and at the University is too great to be easily surmounted by the immature mind.

The truth is that the whole system of higher education in New Zealand is urgently in need of overhaul and reform, and the accrediting proposal of the University Senate, though, in some respects, a step in the right direction, only touches the fringe of the problem. Both the academic type of secondary school and the great part of the curriculum of the University itself are quite out of harmony with the practical needs of New Zealand. In the main these secondary schools and the University itself are copies of institutions in Britain which have grown up through the centuries with a long-settled civilisation and are ill adapted for the requirements of a new country. The problem of the reform of higher education in New Zealand is not a new one. It h&s been before the authorities for years, but so far the forces of conservatism have been strong enough to resist all but minor changes. Until such a general overhaul can be secured, small improvements in detail will certainly be welcomed.