The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1923. "USURPATION”

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11704, 17 December 1923, Page 6

The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1923. "USURPATION”

At the annual prize distribution of both the Wellington Boys’ College and the Wellington Girls’ College reference was made by Mr W. F. Ward, chairman of the Board of Governors, to the fact that the edict has now gone forth that Boards of Governors of public secondary schools will no longer he allowed to spend their money on prizes. There is undoubtedly, as Mr Ward pointed out, a great difference of opinion with regard to the value or otherwise of school prizes. Some educationists hold that they afford a great stimulus to effort, and thereby perform a very useful function; but others are of opinion that the stimulus thus given is not a healthy one, and that the effort should be its own reward. One would think that this is a matter in which, involving as it does no very great expense, the different Boards of Governors might well be left to judge for themselves. More especially as any difference in practice on the part of the various boards, which might result, would afford examples of the actual working out of the two systems, and thus enable a sound judgment on the foots of the case to be arrived at. But the boards are not to be allowed to think for themselves on this question. The Education Department has made up its mind on the subject; and, whatever may be the opinions of the individual boards, the edict ha® go no forth, and the boards must conform to it. “Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do or die.’’ Though, in this case, unfortunately, it may be a case of “do and die.”

The edict does not mean that prizes shall not be given. It is not an absolute prohibition of the giving of prizes. The Education Department, for the present, at all events, confines itself to decreeing that for the future the boards shall not spend their funds on prizes. So that, if prizes are to he given, it must he as the outcome of private generosity. In future, therefore, any hoard which still desires to give prizes as a stimulus to effort must appeal to the generosity of private individuals for the wherewithal. Such appeals, where backed by earnest conviction of the utility of prizegiving, would no doubt meet with a generous response. But it is not everybody who cares to sue “in forma pauperis” in such a matter; and it would, certainly, be moire in consonance with the dignity of the boards that they Bhould be able to devote part of their own funds to the purchase of prizes, if prizes be deemed necessary. That appears to be the view of Mr Ward, who, speaking at the Girls’ College prize distribution, complained that the Education Department is more and more usurping the functions of the Boards of Governors. Formerly, he stated, the board could decide what it would do or not do, and what it would spend or not spend; but all these powers had now been shorn from it. If any more of it® powers were taken away, it would cease to serve any useful purpose. It would become merely a body of philanthropic men engaged in doing unimportant detail work for the Education Department. A very similar complaint was made by Dr Gibbs (chairman of the Board of Governors of Nelson College) at the annual prize-giving at that institution. “The inroads of the Education Department into the rights and privileges of the governors are,” he declared, “getting so pronounoed and oompleto that before long the secondary schools of this Dominion will undoubtedly, unless the public take a more active interest in the matter, he governed by civil servants in Wellington.” It was very questionable, be added, in conclusion, whether it was worth the while of professional men to devote the time and attention they did to the work of these boards if their powers were curtailed to the same extent as in the last few years.

This was a considered statement; and it calls attention to what is, undoubtedly, a grave danger. The greater the number of people throughout the Dominion who are actively interested in matters educational, the better for our education system; and the better, therefore, for all the best and highest interests of our country. That undoubted fact is the great “raison d’etre” of our school committees, our Education Boards, our Technical College Boards of Governors, our High School Boards of Governors, our University College Councils, our University Senate, and so forth. It follows that anything that tends to discourage the active participation of New Zealand’s citizens in educational work must necessarily militate to that extent against the best interests of the Dominion as a whole. It would, certainly, be a serious thing if men of the calibre of those who now serve on the Boards of Governors of our secondary schools were, by departmental usurpation, deterred from continuing to render such valuable and honorary service to the community. But tho same applies, in greater or less degree, to those serving on all tho various honorary educational bodies throughout the country. From nearly all, if not all, of these bodies there have recently come, time after time, complaints of the usurpation or the curtailment of their powers by the Education Department; of a tendency on

the part of the department towards the centralisation of all power in matters educational in its own hands.

Any such tendency could not but be most unfortunate in its results. In a national, or State, system of education there must, in the nature of things, always be a tendency to stereotype the different grades of schools and the universities; to make them all in the mould, with the inevitable consequence that the school children and the college students also are all turned out very much of the same type. The more centralised the administration of the system, the greater the sameness of its product, the more serious the danger of reducing school children and college students alike to one dead level of mediocrity. Any tendency towards the usurpation of the functions of the various educational bodies throughout the Dominion and the centralisation of power in the hands of the Education Department should, "therefore, be watched with the greatest care, and jealously and zealously guarded against. The best thanks of the community are due to Mr Ward and to Dr Gibbs for having called attention to this matter; and we trust that it will not be allowed to rest until the dangers of centralisation are brought home both to the Education Department and to the public at large. Some hold that the department is already past praying for in this respect. But, if that he the case, the greater is the need for such a campaign against centralisation as will awaken the public to its .duty, and thus prevent the department aggrandising itself at the expense of all other educational authorities and taking all the power into its own hands.