The Evening Star FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 1922. JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS.

Evening Star, Issue 18050, 18 August 1922, Page 4

The Evening Star FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 1922. JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS.

Educationists will want to know more of Mr J. Caughley’s system of junior high schools before the distinctly cautious zeal which they showed for it when it was first explained at conferences in Wellington earlier in the year will be likely to give place to anything like liis own enthusiasm. The information which it wa§; suggested then should bo obtained from Britain and other countries before more than a very limited trial is given to the scheme has not yet been secured, and though the Director of Education stated at the meeting which ho addressed in Burns Hall this week that the system had been well tested for from six to nine years in most English-speaking countries, little definite evidence seems to have been provided of its actual working in any country but America. Its success there is not undisputed, even by Americans themselves, and a system which was more highly valued in the United States might he very indifferently suited to this dominion. As wo understand Air Gaughley, he has two complaints to make against the Xew Zealand high schools, which have been regarded as fairly efficient institutions up to the present time. The first is that they are too much dominated by the university influence, and the second is that they present too abrupt a transition to new teachings and new methods for the pupils who enter them from the primary schools.. But the first complaint would appear to bo scarcely logically urged by him, since the Director points out that no less than a third of the University’s students consist of pupils whom tho State very specially encourages, by free places, to go on from the secondary schools to tho University, and apparently ho regards this largo proportion and tho policy involved in it as a cause for pride. If the object is to induce tho largest nunisex of pupils to proceed from secondary schools to tho highest education, it would appear most natural that the high schools should be largely dominated by the influence and the requirements of the University. In objecting to tho prevalence of that influence Air Caughley would appear to he opposing the co-ordination between tho middle and highest departments of the education system which he makes it his chief object to increase between tho middle and lowest departments. It is a strong Rise which the Director makes of a lack of co-ordina-tion between the primary and secondary schools, but the last way by which one might seek naturally to draw those closer together is by thrusting a wedgo between thtpn, which is what is suggested by his nev? intermediate schools. Air Caughley also, we think, misjudges tho effects of the earlier lack of co-ordination which he decries when he regards them as altogether evil. The new ways and atmosphere of a secondary school, tho wide vista of subjects of which he had hardly dreamed before, tho halt-dozen teachers to appeal to and quicken his mind, may be, as ho says, a great shock to a hoy when he comes to them, practically unprepared, from a primary institution. What requires to be recognised is that such new experience and new prospects may ho the greatest stimulus to a boy when they fall to him at the time when his own mind and imagination naturally are expanding. The bright boy feels that he is really beginning his education when this now world opens before him. and lie eaters upon secondary subjects with an ardor and enthusiasm which might be lacking if the whole course were made humdrum and monotonously continuous. It was a great shock of a like kind, though worse in degree no doubt, which the watcher of the skies felt when the new planet swam into his ken, or Balboa at first sight of the Pacific, but they would not have thanked anyone who should have protected them from such an experience. Tho natural effect of forming a new system of junior high schools, which boys would attend up to and including the age of fifteen years, assuming that all the children whom the department has in mind were received by them, would be to leave very few pupils to the present secondary schools except older ones, whoso stay would he of the shortest. But tho chief benefits which a boy stands to derive from tho associations and tho influence of a really good school are only very imperfectly obtained from a stay at it of one or two years. A longer experience is required to give those their fullest value, just as tho esprit do corps and the general atmosphere of a school are formed not by short-term pupils, but by those, in the main, who come earliest under its shaping influence and make tho longest stay. In view of the first consideration, and ns attendance at tho new schools could never be made compulsory for those preferring others, two dangers would seem to bo threatened by the projected scheme Either a greater number of paying pupils would bo sent directly to the secondary schools, which would make them in a large degree class institutions, or a now fillip would ho given to the private and ‘denominational schools, which would be helped then to become a real menace to tho national system. A good many parents would bo disposed to think that the advantages from school life, which are nioro than intellectual, would bo much more likely to bo fully realised from the sustained experience of one good school than by dropping about among three. They would prefer continuity to co-ordination. If the prospect for success of the new intermediate schools is to be viewed as depending on a high compulsory ago for school attendance, education of the parents must bo the first need. AI embers of tho House appeared to have very little doubt, when tho question was brought up a few days ago, that the postponed operation of tiro law which raises tho age to only fifteen years has been caused less by lack of departmental funds to provide the new buildings that would bo needed than by public opposition to such a requirement. Air Parr stated yesterday in tho House that, in making its new experiment with junior high schools, tlie department will go “carefully and cautiously.” Until more information has been obtained it can hardly go too cautiously or too stotvly.