EDUCATION REFORM

Southland Times, Issue 23646, 22 October 1938, Page 14

EDUCATION REFORM

ADMINISTRATIVE FAULTS TYPES OF ADMINISTRATION, with particular reference to the Educational systems of New Zealand and Australia. By I. L. Kandel. New Zealand Council for Educational Research. By R. G. C. McNAB Dr Kandel’s considered opinions of the New Zealand educational system confirm the statements he made when he spoke to New Zealand audiences a year ago. Able men built up our educational administration, but the _ system became stereotyped, and administration was directed to maintaining standards of efficiency which placed a premium on conformity. The most necessary reform is of administration, if our education is to achieve its aim—the attainment of the fullest development of individuals as free, intelligent, and responsible members of society. Leaders are needed who will stir, and not lull, the opinion and wills of th,eir countrymen, more definitely, leaders who, like George Hoghen, will not, in Dr Kandel’s words, “confuse centralization with bureaucracy,” and mistake “instruction for education, words for ideas, the symbols for the things symbolized. Even the private schools, allegedly more free, are not experimental, and the denominational schools, while performing the special functions for which they were founded, of their own will and by the pressure of public examinations, adhere very closely to the national pattern. . - . Dr Kandel, praising as much as he can the inspectors, those worthy men, blames the inspectorate for providing no training in administrative experience and hardly any training for educational leadership, and no position is “professionally more important and crucial” than that of the inspectors. Another ingrained weakness is the absorption in examinations. Dr Kandel observes that the techmeal schools are not dominated by the requirements of external examinations and he believes that theirs is the best branch of education in New Zealand: well equipped, well staffed with administrators and teachers who are well qualified and fully conscious of the objectives that such schools should serve. A third weakness is “the absence of associations and societies for. the, study of education and allied subjects. These charges and proposals have been made before, and, no doubt, will be made often again, but no one can speak with greater authority than Dr Kandel, and no one has written so cogently and comprehensibly.