RECTOR ALARMED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 137, 7 December 1944, Page 6

RECTOR ALARMED

EDUCATION'S TRENDS

GROWTH OF STATE CONTROL

Trends in "national education were deprecated by the Rev. Father Evans, Rector of St. Patrick's College, Silverstream, in his address at the breakingup ceremony, at which his Grace Archbishop O'Shea presided.

Institutions responsible for the future of the Catholic system of education, he said, were alive to the significance of proposed radical changes which, were already, without being submitted to any ultimate authority, being, regarded as an accomplished fact, and these reforms were being scrutinised so that by the free. exercise of the liberty which was theirright what was sound and good in their traditional system might be preserved with readiness to embrace whatever new ideals might be proved of value. It was a critical moment in educational endeavour. "It is no secret that the report of the consultative committee, on which the new order is based, has met with a vex-y mixed reception, and that a large body of the thinking public and the teaching profession itself views its implications with alarm and mistrust,"' he continued. "The Association of the Heads of- Registered Secondary Schools, a competent, responsible, and authoritative educational body, has vigorously. criticised the new type of education; many public secondary school teachers have expressed their apprehension; a series of pamphlets by the Catholic Teachers' Association of Auckland has been published exposing the dangers inherent in the principles and ideas underlying the new scheme of things. It is a fact that there are many who regard these changes as in effect a sabotage of educational standards in the name of democratisation and who feel that they will, if developed, lead to results similar to those recently found to prevail in the U.S.A., where the examination <of enlisted men revealed an astonishing ignorance of the fundamentals of language and computation and of the most elementary facts about the world and its people. And this despite the fact that the curricula of most American .colleges have the comprehensiveness yearned for by the compilers of the New Zealand report. Moreover, nearly all the 'new ideas' have had a trial of 20 years or more in Soviet Russia, which indulged in an orgy of experimentation, and having been proved a failure, have now been almost completely abandoned. RIGHT TO CRITICISE. "It is to be hoped that the Department of Education, which appears in effect to be the last judge of how citizens should be formed—though this should not be so—will give serious consideration to the criticisms that have been made and that, proceeding slqwly, will use the time to make adjustments and modifications in its •plans.

"In a democratic country criticism has a right to be heard and weighed. And at this crisis it is of vital importance that the general public should be , wide awake to the large issues involved. It is a question of the upbringing of a nation; it is the future of the generation of tomorrow that is at stake."

With many, said Father Evans, he feared a serious deterioration in the standard of scholarship. He thought that the compulsory core of studies to be made obligatory on all pupils penalised and handicapped able pupils, if not completely crippling pupils of talent who wished to follow an academic course. He feared that there would be a levelling down to mediocrity, that a smattering of superficial knowledge in subjects whose educational value was problematical would be acquired at the expense of depth in learning, that the new scheme did not provide for mental discipline, steady systematic effort, or the development of the. powers of concentration and application. EXTERNAL EXAMINATIONS. External examinations were not perfect tests, but he deprecated their complete abolition. The proficiency examination affecting the standard of primary school fundamentals had gone, and the Public Service examination was to go this year. It was implied that the school examination system might be replaced by a system of accrediting. He believed that well-con-ducted external examinations provided a qualifying test difficult'to replace by any alternative. It would be folly to abolish them. In the new scheme of' things tendencies and ideals were discernible that ran counter to the true interests of a Christian community, and attention had already been drawn to the in- ] troduction of text-books, some pervaded by naturalism and atheistic evolutionary theories, calculated to undermine the foundations of Christianity in the minds of the young. There appeared the ominous tendency of the State to assume complete control" of education, with the assumption that it had the right to make its demands without allowing parents the right of choice, a virtual denial that the family is the basic unit of society.