MODERN EDUCATION

Waipa Post, Volume 43, Issue 3354, 29 September 1931, Page 2

MODERN EDUCATION

AS VIEWED IN AMERICA.

In view of the keen interest in eductaion in New Zealand, and the growing 1 cult olj " vocational guidance," the following under the heading of "Another Questionable Questionnaire," in a late isue of an American newspaper, is interesting: The federal office of education has recently sent out 125,000 questionnaire blanks to high school pupils, all over the country, and reports that it has received more than 50,000 answers, to date. The students, in these answers, tell what courses they are taking and give a few details concerning those courses. Each student tells what he intends to do after graduation from high school—whether to continue his studies in some college, professional school or technical institution, or to enter some occupation, the nature of which he is asked to describe. And we are told by one of the " specialists" of the office that "from these answers, the office of education will be able to determine whether the students are taking courses directly in line with what they expect to do ultimately." In all this, we have just another example of the methods in use in the so-called office of education to impose its own conceptions of public school education upon the schools of the entire country. In this particular case, the " objective " (a favourite word with our modern educational experts) is to get each public school pupil to choose his future occupation in life at as early a date as possible, and then to take only such courses of study as are " directly in line" with the work of that calling.

Aside from the fact that in the majority of cases " future occupations " chosen at so early a stage in the child's development will be dropped for something else later, either from choice or from necessity, it is wholly wrong that a pupil in the high school stage should limit his studies to such subjects only as are supposed to be "directly in line" with what he is going to do in later life. Many an eminent and successful specialist who has studied little but his own specialty cannot know even that with any high degree of thoroughness, since he cannot understand it in its relation to other subjects, of which he is ignorant.

There is narrowness enough already in American education, without any increase in the supply through the questionnaire labours of the specialists in the "federal office of education."