TIMELY TOPICS

Northern Advocate, 6 February 1936, Page 4

TIMELY TOPICS

CHANGES IN EDUCATION,

In view of the New Zealand Government’s intention to overhaul the education system, a speech made by Dr. W. G. K. Duncan, Director of I Tutorial Classes, University of Sydj pey. is interesting Summing up the papers and discussions at the Summer School of the Australian Institute of Political Science, he said that education must be designed to produce social cohesion of some sort. Cohesion and co-operation were necessai’y if democracy or any form of society were to survive. There must be some indoctrination of children, but it must be very careful. He thought that they must indoctrinate, or teach, children to be fair-minded, open-minded, and critically-minded. Vested interests were at work distorting facts, as those interests did not always want the people to get the facts. ■ It was important to build up in the schools! some kind of immunity against propaganda and slogans. No form of belief should be immune from discussion and criticism. There had to be developed in children a certain zest for finding out what they could do. It was curious to have inside a democracy a dual system of education —State and private schools. He thought that a prima facie case could be made out for the abolition of the private schools, but something would have to be put in their place. The dual system could not be justified on the ground that certain parents were more well-to-do than others. The dual system made it difficult for each half of the community to understand the other, and for each to understand how the other half lived. It might be possible -so to change the private schools as to make them helpful, or even necessary, for a democracy, or It might not; but such a change would not be easy.

<♦> <s> <♦> < ; Words of Wisdom.

Let us he what we are, speak what we think, and in all things keep ourselves loyal to truth. —Longfellow,

<s> <*> Tale of the Day.

Old Lady, to the family doctor who has made a call: “And what right have you. Dr. Smith, to go round telling people I’m better ? Vm the best judge of how ill I am.”