The Evening Star MONDAY, APRIL 26, 1937., EDUCATION REFORM.

Evening Star, Issue 22632, 26 April 1937, Page 8

The Evening Star MONDAY, APRIL 26, 1937., EDUCATION REFORM.

The Government has not forgotten its desire to reform the education system, on the basis of the. recommendations of the Atmore Recess Committee of 1930. A questionnaire was submitted some time ago to various education authorities asking their opinions on that body’s proposals, and the answers are now being studied by the Government members of the Education Select Committee of the House. In due course draft legislation will be based on them, which, after consideration by the full committee, will be open for discussion and the expression of views by all authorities interested before being presented to the House. One of the most important recommendations of the Atmore Committee was that which provided for the unification of control of primary, secondary, and technical education. Single bodies would administer for all three divisions, present post-primary school boards being continued virtually as school committees. A single inspectorate would be established for all types of schools. In tho latest number of ‘ National Education ’ appears an address given by the president of the New Zealand Educational Institute (Mr F, L. Combs), in which the case—or one case —is made for this proposal, which has been endorsed by two Ministers of Education. Mr Combs admits that primary school teachers may be held to be not disinterested in favouring this reform, which would increase their opportunities for advancement; but enlarged facilities for the interchange of teachers between primary and secondary schools promise advantages to the system, which the public will weigh apart from that consideration.

Mr Combs’s general plea for unification, however, dobs not strike us as particularly impressive. Without it, he is convinced, it will bo impossible to get rid of the worst faults of the existing system, and ho goes on to express his opinion of those faults. Both primary and secondary education, in his view, are “ too academic, too bookish, too regimented, too instruc-tion-ridden.” That may be so in a degree, but it would be ridiculous to push the indictment too far. Education without instruction would be indeed a novelty, though there is force in Mr Combs’s contention that “ the prime aim of education 1 was independent of instruction—it was the human relationship that was created between pupils and teachers.” Secondary schools, of course, are more academic than the primary, and,- as the president of the institute sees things, “ what was wanted was to get rid of a top-hamper of tradition palmed off on our system by the Old Country, whose educational institutions were - still in the grip of a paralysing monastic mortmain.” That sounds very effective, but the common gibe against British secondary, education is not that it is academic, still less that it is instruction-ridden, but that it teaches too little except a code of conduct, admired by most and reviled by a minority. The argument against a separate control for secondary and technical schools that it makes for class division must be held to be particularly unconvincing when there are no class bars to entrance to any of them. Mr Combs seems to imply that .it would be a progressive development if the primary schools became vocational in practice and spirit. If that should happen, he is concerned to think that what they were doing would be thwarted by the academicism of the secondary schools. We should rather think it an advantage that there should be some limits to the vocational tendency. There is room for, improvement, no doubt, iu this country’s education system, notwithstanding that its Director, after travelling abroad, found it “ fundamentally sound, modern, and well suited to our requirements,” and that almost all visitors praise it. It is as well that the Minister has no idea of forcing the pace with reforms, and that all opinions will be heard before drastic changes are made in the system.