OLD AND NEW

Southland Times, Issue 24001, 16 December 1939, Page 15

OLD AND NEW

“There is a bright building—it must be the school,” was a remark made to Dr C. E. Beeby, Assistant-Director of Education, some time ago when he and a friend were on their way to inspect the new Christchurch South intermediate school. At the opening of the school last Saturday, Dr Beeby made it a text for comment on educational progress in New Zealand. “That is a very natural remark to make today,” he said, “but 20 years ago you would have been committed to a mental hospital for making it. The pioneers could no more have thought of this type of school than of the highspeed bombing aeroplane.” The school represented the break with the old tradition, in which secondary schools were regarded as providing a better education for those who could afford it, and the primary schools a lower type of education for those who could not pay for anything better. A school of the intermediate type was a link between the two parts of the system, primary and secondary. “The critics do not realize the purpose of it,” said Di- Beeby. The old idea of a secondary school was a school for a few selected children receiving a specialized education. The purpose of the new type of school was to help the children to choose the education suited to them. The workshops and buildings were necessary, because the children had to be “tried out” to discover their aptitudes. “I want you to think of this school as a bridge between the two parts of the system,” he said. “But I would sound one warning note. It is no good having a bridge that does not join at either end. There must be the closest contact between the primary schools at the one end and the post-primary schools at the other.”