PLANS FOR EDUCATION REORGANISATION

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21185, 4 November 1938, Page 8

PLANS FOR EDUCATION REORGANISATION

School committeemen who discuss the problems and purposes of educational reform ought to know the reasons prompting the makers of educational policy in New Zealand to pursue the course now being taken. The discussion on the suggested establishment of an intermediate school in Timaru, which represented the principal feature of the gathering of school committeemen assembled in Timaru on Wednesday evening would seem to convey the impression that neither the members of the Canterbury Board of Education who were present nor the rank and file of tlie committeemen who contributed to the discussion are acquainted with the reasons for the policy of the Minister of Education and the Department in relation to intermediate schools. It was suggested by one of the speakers that unless a three-year course were provided in the school, the proposal should not be entertained. Moreover, the mention of Dr. Beeby’s considered pronouncements on the place of the intermediate school in any system of education was somewhat irrelevant, because those conclusions have not been accepted by the Minister of Education and his principal Departmental officers in determining the changes to be introduced in bridging the gap between primary and post-primary education. The policy being pursued was decided upon before Dr. Beeby joined the Education Department as assistant director and his views as an enlightened educational research worker have not been accepted. The reasons prompting Dr. Beeby’s recommendations are fundamental. On the other hand the policy being pursued in New Zealand has its roots not in sound educational principles but in expediency. The reasons are obvious, because there is no place in the New Zealand system of education for a separate educational entity providing a three-year course. On the other hand, no educationally enlightened country has been satisfied with a two-year course in intermediate or junior high school education. The explanation, as far as New Zealand is concerned is so obvious as to need no elaboration. The introduction of a post-primary school providing a three-year course would undermine the existing secondary and technical schools; destroy their present schemes of work; necessitate complete reorganisation of secondary school staffs, lower their status and influence, and, what would be more detrimental, the new school would introduce educational processes that would not, as has been shown in Auckland, provide that much to be desired articulation between the lower schools and the secondary and technical schools above. Hence the well-founded objections of the secondary school authorities to the introduction of new schools providing a three year course (which would take all third form pupils from those schools); hence, too, the educational compromise introduced by the Department in favour of schools providing a two year course. In a provincial centre like Timaru, where post-primary education is provided for town and country pupils on the most generous and comprehensive scale, and where the primary schools are functioning most conscientiously, it is obvious that before any major disturbance in the existing system of primary and post-primary education should be tolerated, the advocates of such disrupting reorganisation ought to be called upon to show that desired and practicable changes in the educational scheme of things cannot be advantageously introduced within the existing organisation.