Training Colleges.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19165, 23 November 1927, Page 8

Training Colleges.

We printed a statement yesterday by the Minister for Education in which he indicated that, while he would "give "the most careful consideration" to objections lodged by Education Boards, he was in favour of central control of the Training Colleges in the four centres. Most of the advantages the Minister sees in centralisation are not advantages at all, and the real improvements to which he points the way could be effected quite simply under the present system. It may be true, as Mr Wright says, that the conditions of entrance to Training Colleges, the length and kind of training, and the maintenance grants to students, should be uniform, for these are general matters, and uniformity can be obtained without handing over control to Wellington. But it is a different matter to urge the need of a central control of curricula. Both control and uniformity, when carried beyond a certain point, stifle initiative and produce only stereotyped dullness, and there is evidence enough in the grading system that the Education Department's ideal seems to be to turn out teachers as accurately branded and classified as a shipment of frozen meat. Actually, nothing is more important than that the teacher's training should leave his originality and enterprise intact, and this is only possible in an institution which has elbow-room to develop, within necessary limits, along its own lines. In this connexion the University Colleges can be of great assistance to Training Colleges, and they should work together as far as possible. But Mr Wright says that " the relation of "the Training College to the University College must, in a national sys"tem, be nationally controlled," which either means nothing at all or is ridiculous. There are many directions in which the Training College system could be improved, but improvement will not result from a fresh batch of Departmental regulations and the imposition of a dead-level of uniformity.