SECONDARY EDUCATION

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2620, 16 November 1915, Page 6

SECONDARY EDUCATION

"THE SWAY OF THE PAST"

HON. J. HANAN COMMENTS ON OUR SYSTEM

Some interesting comment on the defects, as they appear to him, of our system of secondary education, was mado hy the Hon. J. A. Hanan (Minister of Education), in an interview which he gave to the "Taranaki Daily News." "The educational interests of any comnvunity are foremost among its concerns, ' said Mr. Hanan. "In these days the sphere of eduction has widened and its good promise of raising' the level of our civilisation becomes brighter with the advance of time. The task of the modem educator is more varied in character than of yore. Tho old conception of what constituted an educated man centred largely on'familiarity with the classics and with the world of books, and it is an anomalous fact that ' the tendency to hold on to this exclusivo idea persists in the seats of learning. Now there is a tendency to alter this. The course of study pursued both at the universities and secondary schools is still to some extent too much under the sway of tho past. In our High ■Schools the literary-cum-classics course still remains the main thoroughfare for pupils to pass through. Too many of our boys set out upon this road and then desert it before it has led them anywhere : though this was not the caso at some schools. I will not go as far as to say, however, that a number of our fourteen-year-old boys who bnv a swag of new books and make a trief start in half a dozen new subjects, and then close those books and gladly cast them aside, have wholly wasted, their time. I am well aware that: the staffs of a number of our High Schools are both efficient and enthusiastic, but I contend that a good deal of the material that comes into their hands does not remain long enough to receive an adequate impression, and a good deal of it is fitted to be shaped in a different mould altogether.

"The greater percentage of. boys and [ girls at secondary schools would be much better attending a technical school after they have passed through the primary course, for a technical education will lead them towards some definite. goal. The High Schools have rightly been made schools of the people by. the liberal measures which, somo years ago, opened their doors practically to all scholars who successfully pass through tho primary course. But a large number of the pupils who throng to these schools have no, use for tho subjects of study taught' at High Schools, in the warehouse, or in some trade, and for them the course at the High School is a waste of time. We must provide for the proper training of such and technical schools offer this" we must break through the conservatism which directs boys and girls through.tho high schools and universities. The new programme of study should, in the first place, consolidate the training of the primary schools by keeping up the work m English, arithmetic, - drawing, etc. without trying to extend it. But the staple of the programme should consist of manual and technical training, the particular branch of: which—for example, agriculture or mech'anioal crafts—would be determined by the industries predominating in the particular districts. Tho two or three years (following the close of the primary school/ period are. too often wasted. They could be most fruitfully spent in developing those aptitudes, physical and montal, which aro called into play in the various provinces of skilled labour on which omr industrial and commercial expansion depends."