DEVELOPMENT OF SYSTEM

Southland Times, Issue 23288, 26 August 1937, Page 8

DEVELOPMENT OF SYSTEM

Technical Education In Dominion

IMMEDIATE BENEFIT CLAIMED

SUBJECTS INCLUDED IN CURRICULA

The growth of technical schools in New Zealand, the work they had accomplished and the methods adopted to accomplish that work were discussed by Mr C. A. Stewart, principal of the Southland Technical College, in an address last evening to the South Invercargill branch of the Labour Party. Mr A. B. Rogerson was chairman, and Mr W. M. C. Denham, M.P., and Mrs Denham were also present. There was’a fair attendance.

The chairman said the speaker that evening was a man of wide influence and it augured well for the Labour Party that such a man could spare time to address a branch on such an important subject as technical education.

Mr Stewart said the teaching profession generally realized that the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) was a student of education and had worked for years to fit himself for the position he now held. Mr Stewart said that in discussing the advantages of technical education he did not wish to belittle the other

branches of education. Technical schools were merely fortunate in that they had entered the field much later than other secondary schools. He then explained the constitution of the Southland Technical College Board of Managers, which, he said, was representative of various sectional interests. The representatives of the employees, while loyal to the party they represented, showed no partisanship in their activities on the board. Their sole interest, as members of the board of managers, was directed towards advancing the interests of the school. < FREE PLACE SYSTEM Before discussing the growth of the technical schools, Mr Stewart said he was not setting out to criticize the high schools. Anything he said was to be taken generally. The technical schools had grown as a form of protest against certain features of the high schools in the early years. Any progress made had been due to the Rt. Hon. R. J. Seddon and Mr George Hogben, inspector-general of schools, who at the beginning of the century introduced the free place system with the general idea that every boy and girl should have two or three years’ education after primary school work was finished. This free place system was then the most generous in the world. Discussing the secondary school education of those days, Mr Stewart said it had not suited New Zealand. The secondary schools then were designed on classical lines, on a narrow curriculum copied from an English system designed for the sons of gentry and obviously ill-adapted to New Zealand—a country where nearly everyone had to earn his or her living. The inadequacies of the system became painfully obvious when secondary education became open to bigger numbers of pupils. Mr Hogben had expected that to meet the new conditions brought about by the free place system, the high schools would widen their curriculums, but this had not been done. Mr Stewart quoted the Atmore report in which the advent of the technical school was attributed to the continued rigidity of the high school curriculum. The typical attitude of the secondary school master of • those days, he continued, had been that manual training and similar subjects had no value whatever, but that rather than lose pupils he would make his curriculum more liberal. This was an attitude which even today persisted in some districts. In those days, too, the bigger towns in New Zealand had been making strong efforts to establish, evening classes for instruction in such subjects as engineering. Lack of money ana accommodation had, however, been a source of difficulty. Staffing, too, had been another difficulty. With the opening of the day schools naturally it had become possible to provide a permanent and competent staff. The growth of technical schools had been so great that in Auckland and Christchurch not only were there day classes, but also two relays of evening classes. In some cases there were also classes on Saturday morning. “This,” said Mr Stewart, “disposes of the argument that the running of technical schools is costly because of the amount of equipment which is necessary. So constant is the use of the schools and so great is their value that the cost, considered in proportion, is relatively low.” CO-EDUCATION DEFENDED Mr Stewart said he considered coeducation a sound system and thoroughly democratic in principle. It was the sanest and healthiest method, and had existed for years in Scotland.. Coeducation was in force in the primary schools of the Dominion and in the universities. Only in the high schools were the boys and girls educated in separate schools. In the Technical Colleges masters teaching manual subjects needed no artificial justification for instructing pupils in those subjects. For his own part, Mr Stewart said, he had taught Latin for some years and had found

difficulty in giving sound reasons why this subject should be taught. The teachers in technical schools dealt with subjects of great utility which held also an immediate natural interest for the pupils. We would emphasize as the two most important qualifications for teaching the possession of enthusiasm and “God’s own practical common sense ” A teacher had to have iaith in his subject, faith in himself and faith in his pupils. »Of these things the academically trained instructor had no monopoly and he must be careful not to assume that he had. When this was fully understood the value of the democratic nature of the technical staffs with their specialists m practical subjects could readily be It had been a habit in the past to refer, with invidious distinction, to cultural and utilitarian subjects. He wished to point out that no other schools in New Zealand had attempted so much in the teaching of drawing and the allied cultural subjects as the technical schools. Care was always taken to ensure that the subjects were dovetailed into one another —art mto woodwork and so on. Frequently the continuity was assisted by the same master taking classes in allied subjects. The technical schools, Mr Stewart continued, claimed to give . education of almost immediate practical value which would later be extended or developed in evening classes. It had been suggested that the present system was conducive to unseemly rivalry between technical and high schools. This, in some cases, was true. If the development of the technical schools had been planned beforehand, the present confusion would not have arisen. COMPOSITE SCHOOLS Discussing the possibility of technical and high schools coming under one control, Mr Stewart said he did not favour the composite school, except in towns of intermediate size. At a certain stage of its youth a town needed more than one post-primary school, and he held the opinion that two composite schools would not be comparable with one technical school and one high school. In composite schools all the senior pupils would naturally be those taking the long-term course —the academic course which led in a number of instances to the professions or the universities. This would mean that in these schools those taking the shorter technical course, would tend to become submerged and insignificant in comparison. To establish composite schools would be, he might say, to emphasize too much the value of the academic side of learning—a decidedly unsound principle in a democratic community. Mr Denham said he had been deeply interested in the address and congratulated the South Invercargill branch of the Labour Party on securing a speaker such as Mr Stewart. He added that he would like to know Mr Stewart’s opinion on the abolition of examinations. Mr Stewart said that technical schools had always been able to admit pupils who had not secured either proficiency or competency certificates. Pupils who had been classed as dullards at primary school and had themselves formed the opinion that their position was at the bottom of the class had often shown particular aptitude for technical school work and had done very well in class. As senior free places were granted in technical schools purely on the recommendation of the staff the technical schools had never been dependent on examinations as had the high schools. A vote of thanks to the speaker, proposed by Mr Denham, was carried by acclamation.