EDUCATION STANDARDS.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 July 1934, Page 4

EDUCATION STANDARDS.

Any dispassionate individual is likely to agree with the chairman of the Taranaki Hospital Board (Mr. P. E. Stainton) in regard to the standard of education required by that organisation for pupil nurses. Mr. Stainton repudiated an assertion made publicly by a member of the Farmers’ Union that the board’s insistence upon certain educational qualifications savoured of snobbery in that it made it almost impossible for country girls prevented by distance or circumstances from attending a secondary school to become probationer nurses. As the chairman of the board pointed out, the demand for a higher standard of general education applies to entrants to all the professions. He might have said without exaggeration that it applies to all skilled occupations, including one of the most important, namely, primary production. To attempt to over-rule this tendency is to try to set back the clock. It is true that the standard of education required may press harshly upon the individual. So does almost every interfereflce with individual desires or actions for the common good, and it is with full recognition of this that civilisation and respect for the law have developed. In accepting candidates for hospital training the first consideration, as Mr. Stainton emphasised, is the care of the patients, and the demands upon the intelligence of nurses increase as science evolves new weapons for the conflict with disease. Any hospital authority is justified, therefore, in insisting that probationer nurses shall have shown at least reasonable aptitude for learning the theory of the professional work they desire to undertake as well as the actual practical duties of nursing. It may be that the new school leaving certificate will ease the position by enabling secondary school pupils who have not taken all the subjects required for the matriculation examination to show that they possess the necessary aptitude and ability for training as nurses. The public which supports and uses the hospitals has the right to expect the most skilled attention available. Experience has proved that as a general rule the girl who has reached a certain standard of education makes the most capable nurse. Hospital authorities are thor-

oughly justified, therefore, in insisting | upon that standard having been reached by all probationers. That this emphasises the need for an education system affording equal facilities to rural and town school pupils is quite true, as was pointed out by Mr. H. E. Blyde during the discussion of the matter by the Taranaki Hospital Board. That, however, is a matter outside the control of hospital»authorities.