SCHOOL PROGRESS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22585, 13 March 1948, Page 6

SCHOOL PROGRESS

REPLY TO CRITICS DEFENCE OF SYSTEM BENEFIT TO CHILDREN (P.A.) WANGANUI. March 12. “People usually hesitate before criticising many of the professions, but education is something everyone knows everything about. They have all been to school, or if they haven’t, they know someone who has.” “Thus Mr. G. H. Mitchell. Dominion president of the New Zealand Educational Institute, in addressing Rangitikei teachers last night prefaced his defence of the existing education system. He denied that the standard of education in New Zealand had declined and charged critics with comparing present stanards with their own school experience after looking back on their youth "through a rosy haze.” “The system in vogue today.” he said, "is not really new. The changes made are not revolutionary but merely progressive, comparable with progressive changes made in other phases of human life. “Nobody would dream of going back to the methods of transport or communications used 40 years ago. and those who criticise education today would surely not recommend that we return to the old methods of mass instruction with all its evil effects on the personality of a child.” Education today distinguished _ between the bright and not so bright, between the child who was good academically and the child who was good practically, and it made provision for the handicapped child. It also endeavoured to give each child an education from which he could profit most.

If critics could visit the schools they would find things vastly different from what they imagine because most of those who condemned the present system had not been inside a school in recent years. Thev. therefore, were not personally familiar with what was going on in them, and must judge on what they had heard other people say.