PUBLIC OPINION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 72, Issue 6243, 17 June 1946, Page 5

PUBLIC OPINION

UNIVERSITY LEAD WANTED

COMPLAINT OF PRIMARY TEACHERS

“ Education for a generation has been steadily moving toward the first position among the social services. ’Primary school teachers can honestly claim to have done a good deal toward putting it there. Can the universities?” asks a leading article in National Education, the official organ of the New Zealand Educational Institue. “I No, not if a press clipping service is anything to go by. Apart from starting an internal dispute about the inferior teaching of English in all schools except universities, university teachers have done little to arouse public attention or to focus and direct public opinion. “The prestige of the universities is potentially a good thing. It goes hand in hand with the feeling that, in the educational field, they can and should give a lead. But if, on the other hand, this prestige remains a frozen asset, it is doubtful whether it is worth cold storage,” the article •continues.

“ Their standing would have enabled them to publicise the paramount importance of beginnings and therefore to urge and perhaps to secure classes of twenty in infant schools. What is ill done in infant classes cannot be remedied in universities. “As matters stand their asset of prestige has not been employed to the advantage of the universities themselves. Their classes have become outrageously large, there is next to no scope in them for tutorial work or research, and over-crowding is as bad in their buildings as it is in the worst of our primary schools. “Co-operation among all sections of the teaching service, given enhanced significance by the prestige and leadership of university teachers, would, if sustained, accomplish wonders—even an educational renaissance to accompany that renaissance of social conscience so active during the last decade. Will the universities give a lead?”