EQUALITY IN EDUCATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 24 June 1943, Page 4

EQUALITY IN EDUCATION

TWO further instalments of educational reform are on the way in New Zealand. One is the raising of the school leaving age to 15 and ultimately to 16; the other is removal of our post-primary schools from the bondage imposed on them for decades by the tyranny of the University Entrance (Matriculation) examination. Combined with abolition of the Proficiency examination a few years ago these measures are calculated to impart a greater elasticity to our educational process than it has had hitherto. Teachers have constantly asked for the changes and, in doing so, they must be fully sensible of the added responsibility which freedom of any kind always brings with it. Moves towards planning a better world must be accompanied by more education, not less; not only that, but by the right type of education. The task of deciding that difficult question is now to be largely handed over to the schools and teachers.

Educational experiment is always mainly a matter of trial and error. Years elapse between the training of youth and the measurement of results. Both good and bad in a system only show out by degrees and then often in a negative way. The latest prospective changes are designed to provide more equality of educational opportunity, which is a very different tiling from equality of achievement. We are going to broaden our education but not deepen it. The extension would be dearly bought, however, if it prevented first-class intellects from drinking deep of the fountain of knowledge, • something they have been given every incentive to do under the thorough-go ing if circumscribed curriculum of our academic secondary schoolsOther countries are wrestling with this problem of how to make education pioneer the path towards a better world. In a survey which has attracted attention in Victoria Mr J. D. G. Medley, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, warmly supported the principle of equality of opportunity in education, yet he would apply positive tests to ascertain who werq benefiting from it most and take special care of these pupils as likely to include the intellectual leaders of the succeeding generation. He would not! carry equality of opportunity to the border of absurdity, for, he comments, “no society of the future can exist which is afraid of the production of an elite.” Neither does he visualise or wish for a “new order” in which “some people are not more stupid than others” or where merit does not bring a recognition and a success that is denied to failure.