NOT DEFINITELY VOCATIONAL

Evening Star, Issue 20136, 28 March 1929, Page 5

NOT DEFINITELY VOCATIONAL

THE JUNSOR HIGH SCHOOL DR HIGH! A WARM ADVOCATE [Sraci.vL to the ‘Stab.’] CHRISTCmJUCiI, March 27. A strong champion of the proposal (o introcltite the junior high school sysU’iu into New Zealand, which has heen strongly hinted at by the Minister ol Education (Mr Atinore) during his visits to the Canterbury schools during tho last lew days, is Dr J. Might, r rlo. - ot Canterbury College. Dr High;, agrees, too, with the Minister’s contention that education in the past in tiie dominion has given a bias towards the professions and city work. J)r Might explained that it was not intended to make the junior -high schools definitely vocational in tho education they would give. Post-primary education would begin at about the twelfth year, and the junior high schools, which would give the lirst stage o! post-primary education, would be better as separate schools and not a.s annexes u> the primary schools. They would have a, general academic or cultural curriculum, which would be taken by all pupils, but there would be, in addition, special courses. 'These special courses would not bo strictly vocational, but each would supply the fundamental principles underlying a group of vocations. The domestic science course, for instance, would give the knowledge of the principles underlying the science, bat would not be in any nay a training in tiie technique of domestic science, from about the twelfth to the fifteenth year the childro i would go through these, junior high schools, and would got general cultural training, great attention being paid to literature, music, and the other lino arts, as well as to history, geography, and mathematics. Students would choose the additional course which seemed most fitted to them, tins being regarded as a ” try out” period in no endeavour to lind out their apceulres in relation to what might he come their life work. The definite vocational 'training would conic later, in the senior high •schools. Dr flight said that in tho large centres in the future there might be different senior high schools. one specialising in academic subjects which were really vocational, being training for the professions; one in commercial subjects; one in agricultural subjects; and one in industrial subjects. fit oru inary -sized towns these would be vocational departments of the one school. Even in the vocational departments, however, the cultural subjects would lie carried oil. ”11 by his statement, that the New Zealand system of education is overacademic, the Minister moans that tho system has in the past given too mueli of a bias towards tho professions, he is "Meetly right,” said Dr flight. "The sooner that is put right the better.”