The Wanganui Chronicle WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 3939. NEW ZEALAND’S HIGH SCHOOLS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 114, 17 May 1939, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 3939. NEW ZEALAND’S HIGH SCHOOLS.

'Y'HE Minister of Education, speaking at Taihape, said: “If there is one thing that is wrong about the schools in this Dominion it is the aping of English school traditions.” This is a hard saying, but is it a true one? The distinguished author of Mr. Chips has revealed that even though 30 years ago Leys School at Cambridge had been recently renovated, its plumbing arrangements were woefully lacking. Insofar as the equipment of certain of our public schools which follow the English tradition is concerned they may be superior to those similar institutions in England. But on the other hand the English school traditions of which the Minister speaks in hardly complimentary terms represents a growth which has been the product of centuries. It would indeed be unwise for our headmasters to cut themselves off from the experience of the past, and while there is no need to be slavish imitators there is much good in the traditions which have been handed down to us in matters educational. It is unwise to teach one’s grandmother to suck eggs, but it is farther removed from wisdom to assume that grandmother has never learned anything that is worth while. It is also undesirable to speak of English public school traditions as though they are something like the law of the Medes and Persians, which may not be altered nor amended. Dr. Norwood, in his book, ‘‘The English Tradition of Education,” writes of the secondary school thus: “The secondary day schools cover a very wide range of diversity of type. In-some cases they arc hoary with antiquity, in others they are the creation of yesterday: in some they are, and have long been, closely attached to a university, and draw their inspiration from it: in others they arc the extension of the elementary school. It is a far cry from Westminster, St. Paul’s, or Merchant Taylor's to the new municipal school planted on a suburban site in a district which ten years ago was all fields, and has in that space of time been transformed into-a hastily built dormitary for city workers, but it is a distance which can be covered .... Things have changed a good deal since those closing days of the nineteenth century. But looking back on what was to be learned in one school that was not the least famous or' their number, I personally have reason io recognise with gratitude that it. put before us a high standard of industry and a' real conception of culture based on respect for knowledge.” “On the whole the newer schools are shy of the old tradition, and regard themselves rather as extensions of the State system of elementary education. They have been officially guided, and to some extent inspired, by the Board’s Regulations for Secondary Schools; they are inclined to judge themselves by external tests, a good inspection report, a good examination result, and other things that can be measured in an office: they are apt to feel that they are not encouraged to try for things that are more intangible, and possibly of more value. Their governing bodies cease to be really independent, or eease to exist altogether, and the headmasters must go hat in hand to the permanent education official of the Local Authority, by whatever 1 il le he may be called. ” Now all of the. foregoing seems to be very familiar to New Zealand readers. Education in New Zealand, as in the newer schools in England, has been departmentalised. The hope of building up traditions of their own is dead within the schools. This must necessarily be so when the masters must be forever looking at the grading lists and are not considered for the work which they do, but for the examinations that they have passed. The traditions which have been fostered in New Zealand education have been those traditions of the newer schools and the same schools in England and in New Zealand are conscious that there is something lacking. Whether it is possible to bring into the newer schools of England and the State schools of New Zealand that atmosphere which permeates the older schools of England since the, educational revival of the last century, is a problem which has yet to be resolved, but the Minister for Education wav well be asked what is he doing about it?