The Timaru Herald. TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 1933. LIONS IN THE PATH.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19509, 7 June 1933, Page 6

The Timaru Herald. TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 1933. LIONS IN THE PATH.

Japan’s reason for returning to Geneva to participate in the Disarmament Conference, although no longer a member of the League of Nations, has at last been revealed. Wily Nippon has thrown another bombshell into the Conference by demanding naval equality with Britain and the United States. This new development will confuse the issue now clarifying itself in consideration of the British plan, which already provides for much less disarmament than was looked for when the Conference opened. That may make it easier to get it through. The United States, is not likely to agreed to Japan's demand, but will do everything to put the British plan into effect. Captain Eden, who is representing Britain at Geneva, is far more effective than any other British delegate at the Conference so far. The French, so long as the present Government remains in power (which may not be for long) will go to the utmost length to secure agreement. And Germany, even under Herr Hitler, has agreed to the principle of the attainment of equality by stages. On the other hand, the British Government is still making difficulties about the control of civil aviation which is an essential condition of the abolition of military aviation. Britain also is still demanding to retain a certain number of military aeroplanes for police purposes, an exception at which most other nations very reasonably look askance. Germany, while accepting equality by stages, insists that there shall be genuine reduction or aboltiion of offensive weapons here and now, and to meet this, the British proposal to abolish tanks of over 10 tons—and only those—may have to be made much more drastic. And France with the new menace of a defiant German nationalism across her frontiers, will not easily agree to the heavy reduction of her home army proposed in the British plan. This probably accounts for the hitch in the Four-Power Pact negotiations that was followed by the postponement of the British, American and French disarmament talks. France appears to have reached a point where she dare not make further concessions until the security guarantees are defined. France is dissatisfied with the isolationist attitude of the United States Congress, which is regarded as destroying the expectations founded on President Roosevelt’s “new attitude” towards security. France has satisfied herself she has little hope of effective international control of armaments in return for concessions, and therefore will not accept any weakening of the French text for the Four-Power Pact respecting Germany’s status.

CHAOS IN EDUCATION. National Education, the official organ of the New Zealand Educational Institute, voices strong objection to the educational policy now being adopted by the Government, in introducing the intermediate school, without reference to the effect on the system as a whole. The paper declares that the “general result will be chaotic conditions in the primary schools affected by it, staff disorganisation, salary anomalies, and the grading list thrown out of gear.” At first glance the proposed intermediate school bears a striking resemblance to the extravagant junior high school but dressed in less costly raiment. Closer scrutiny, however, will convince anyone who takes the trouble to examine this proposed scheme of reorganisation, or rather disorganisation, that the intermediate seiiool is the special creation of the Dominion’s educational authorities. The junior high school which provides a three-year course is being jettisoned for the obvious reason that it is too costly, that it disrupts, rather than facilitates articulation between primary and secondary education, and that the product of the school can find no place in established technical and higher schools. The intermediate school has all the disruptive characteristics of the junior high school, with the added weakness that its courses are restricted to two years, and it gives the appearance of being capable of development into a cheap imitation of a secondary school designed to sidetrack pupils the Department desires to keep out of the high schools. It is in fact an educational freak that cannot be justified on sound educational grounds. It has become the practice of advocates of -intermediate schools to say that that line of advance follows the recommendations embodied in the Hadow Report. Such is not the case. No such school can be found advocated in those recommendations. As a matter of fact, the Consultative Committee of the English Board of Education, which issued the Hadow report, considered and reported on the organisation, objective and curriculum of courses of study suitable for children who will remain in fulltime attendance at schools other than secondary schools up to the age of fifteen. It ought to be pointed out, perhaps, and this phase is not stressed by the advocates of intermediate schools. The new type of post-primary school in England is not a bridge between primary and secondary

education, but rather a terminus, because it is not intended that the pupils going through those schools will go on to higher secondary schools. The Hadow Report, how-

ever, does offer progressive educationists some direction, not by way of deciding the type of school which ought to be introduced, but on the question of education policy generally. The report says:

“A community must solve its educational problems in accordance with its own traditions and circumstances, and even were the experience available for comparison more complete than it is, it would supply suggestions to be pondered rather than an example to be imitated.”

The problem confronting New Zealand to-day is not the lack of educational facilities for all who

can avail themselves of the generous provision made iu this country up to the gates of the university, but the reorganisation of the national system of education within the existing institutions, along lines which would facilitate better articulation between primary and secondary education. Even in England and Wales where hundreds of thousands of children are lost to all processes of education within the school after fourteen years of age, it was early realised that it it not a sound policy to attempt to make a sharp cleavage at the age of eleven or twelve in order to sweep all pupils above that age into central or secondary schools; indeed in the words of Mr Spurley Hey, Director of Education in Manchester, “Experience proved the unwisdom of a system based on the arbitrary decapitation of elementary schools and, further, that on such a basis it is difficult if not impossible to establish a sound system of advanced education.” It is highly significant that two Directors of Education, one shortly after his retirement in 1927, and the other a day or two before retirement in 1933, should have adversely reported on the junior high school. Mr Caughley confessed that the Kowhai experiment (involving a capital expenditure of nearly £50.000 and staffed at a cost of £IO,OOO per annum for less than 900 pupils) created two breaks where one existed, and the school courses could not be made to harmonise with the existing system. Six years later Mr Strong, with equal emphasis, unwittingly endorsed the opinion of Sir Joshua Fitch, the well-known English educationist, given twelve years ago, that the junior high school creates an educational cul de sac. These were the fundamental weaknesses of this line of reorganisation that were feared by the opponents of the scheme, because they could see that such a

school would not bridge the gap between primary and secondary education. The most disturbing feature of the Dominion system of education is the silence that is forced upon the school inspectorate, by control being vested in the central authority. The volte face of two directors of education at the close of their official connection with the control of education, seems to suggest that if more freedom were afforded the country’s inspectors of schools much helpful criticism of educational policy would be voiced. But under the centralised control of the inspectorate, the very officials who see the system from the inside are forced into silence by the bureaucrats who control education from the head office in the Capital City.

HAS THE LEAGUE FAILED? Answering the critics of the League of Nations, who are beginning to ask: “Has the League failed?” the president of the Timaru branch of the League of Nations took us to task in an address last night for our criticism of certain statements embodied in the annual report of the local branch of the Union. We are reminded that the League of Nations has rendered most useful service, and that there is no disgrace in failure. As a matter of fact, all that happened was that we felt constrained to comment on the report of the local branch, because the claim was made that the League had actually won success in handling the Sino-Japanese dispute. The report of the Timaru branch of the League said: ‘‘We have a thankful consciousness of triumphant success in that after many delays, all the other nations of the League cast a unanimous vote of condemnation of Japan’s illegal course of action. On that great occasion the nations stood together as one body under the aegis of the League, and this being so, who can speak of failure?” We do not think that high officialdom in Geneva itself has had the audacity to claim that the League of Nations is “conscious of a triumphant success” iu its handling of the Sino-Japanese clash. The fact of the matter is, that since that “great occasion,” which inspired such “thankful consciousness of triumphant success" iu the hearts of the Timaru branch of the League of Nations Union, all the nations associated with Geneva in relation to the Manchurian tangle have ignominionsly failed to honour their obligations under the Covenant of the League, the Kellogg Fact, and the Nine Power Treaty. These imposed certain definite obligations upon all signatories to defend the defenceless members of the League against the terrific onslaught of the ruthless barbarians who not only reduced solemn treaties to scraps of paper, but destroyed the cities of a comparatively defenceless neighbour,

rode rough-shod into country which was regarded under the terms of treaties as the inviolable territory of a member of the League, and capped a long series

of defiance of all the members of the League and all the obligations of treaties bearing her signatures, by arrogantly withdrawing from membership, to the accompaniments of threats of warlike reprisals against any country

that dared move a finger to save the helpless victim of the most ruthless military conspiracy ever carried through in the Far East.