TEACHING IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3832, 23 August 1927, Page 34

TEACHING IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

A NEW ZEALANDER'S VIEWS. WELLINGTON, August 17. ‘■Compared with New Zealand the teaching given in the schools in New South Wales is more practical. A greater afterbenefit is derived from it, and it tends to provide better service to the community. ’ These views were expressed by Miss Irvine Smith, of the Wellington Training College, at a meeting of the Education Board today when she gave members sonic of her impressions about education in New South Wales. “I found,” she said, “that there was no overcrowding, that the staffs were more efficient than ours, that the equipment was better and that a child went in for the career for which he was most suited. 1 think the time has come tn New Zealand when we should re-organise our education system, especially postprimary work which should be put on a sounder and a more economic basis. We have in New Zealand primary and technical school teachers all graded differently and working more or less in watertight compartments. We feci in our hearts that a teacher of a secondary school is on a slightly higher social basis than a technical school teacher, and this sort of thing should not exist. We arc stressing the professional side of education too much. We are pandering to the sense of gentility. After all, it is by handwork and not by the classics that the masses have to live.”

Mis s Smith thought that a wider use should be made of handwork in its broadest sense.

Referring to the grading system in operation in Australia, Miss .Smith said that while in New Zealand it was possible to climb to the top of the ladder merely by a certain amount of “swot,” students in Australia had to go through several stages before they were given charge of a school of any size. They were also required to spend three years in the country. Soina of the baekblocks in Australia, she said, were beyond a New Zealander s conception, and she instanced one teacher who, to get to his destination, had to travel 500 miles by train and then 150 miles more on the back of a camel.