THE EDUCATION REPORT
FACTS IGNORED
PURPOSE OF UNIVERSITY FUND
AUCKLAND. January 14
The report of the Parliamentary Recess Education Committee came in for both praise and blame from Professor J. Macmillan Brown, Chancellor of the New Zealand University, in the course of his address to the Senate at Auckland to-day.
“As long as the Parliamentary Committee confined its attention to the primary system and the relation of this system to technical and secondary schools it was able to suggest much that might he useful in educational reorganisation,” he said. “One of the most useful suggestions was that the system might begin to give the trend towards agriculture that the country needs. The-tendency of schools is to prepare youth, even rural youth, for town occupations instead of primary industries. If a community is to he healthy and prosperous, the trend mustbe iu the other direction. Unfortunately more is needed than this to turn the tide of youth to the land; there must be a natural attraction in the occupation itself, and it never can rival those of the town till farming pays better than they. Not only must the vonth be trained to succeed in agriculture; but conditions must be such as to make the. youths so trained certain of a good livelihood.
AYISE..KEY WORDS
“This was iiot the only wise lead the committee gave to education in New Zealand. Titov recognised that we are, like the rest of the world, in tne financial depths into. which a great, war plunges mankind and that no progress can he made without cutting off all extravagance and even curtailing expenditure in essentials. Economy was their leading cue, and next to it they kept wisely in view—efficiency; their motto was economise, only in such a wav that efficiency should remain unimpaired. This led them to another wise kev-word in reorganisation, combination or consolidation. Wherever two or-; more bodies are fulfilling the same function in the same area, let them amalgamate so ns to save overhead 1 expenses this is a wise principle in all departments of '■public . life .in this time bf financial stress and a principle that might he ■applied with great advantage in the co-ordination .of the primary, secondary. and technical systems. Tn this coordination, these cues .and key-words must ,be.kept. ever, in mind.
KEY WORDS FORGOTTEN
“But when the committee came to the Uniyersity sphere- it forgot all ’ about them: for there, was on the committee no one who bad practical acquaintance-. with-, the.. history and administration -of the. University. The committee took two cues from a previous commission which was equally .’unfamiliar with the history-, but had' ministration of ouiyUniversity, but bad the advantage of. coming .some years before the • beginning of this time, of financial stress. These cues were the inadequacy of the college libraries and that of professorial salaries, cues that could. appeal best to a well-filled Treasury. But it struck the members of the committee that this /cue was bv no means in harmony witli one of their leading key words—economy.
“Some financial genius, who would have been a. godsend 1 to the robber barons .of medieval times, pointed to the loose £70,000 which he believed to have discovered in the University balancesheet, ignoring the fact that one large item, a balance of £17,000 ddd for the time being in the general account, consisted largely of examination fees immediately to be substantially diminished 'bv the payment of the expenses of examination, and therefore not available for capitalisation, and suggested that this capital fund could be used for am- purposes for which money was required,.ignoring the fact that so large a- snip "must nave been meant by a responsible body like the Senate for some essential purpose in the University.
Tn spite of the explanations of two professors who attended at the request of the committee, only extracts of whose evidence is given, and in the absence of anyone on the committee re-, presenting the University body to point out that tin’s capital had been deliberately accumulated and earmarked as a sellolarshin fund, and that to take' it a wav would be to draw the heart’s blood from the most vital function of the University. the selection and training of the vonthful talent of the countiw. the committee regarded it as a windfall furnished by a kind providence to meet its needs.
UTOPIAN PROPOS \LS
“So flushed was the committee with its good fortune that it- even proposed to endow New Zealand with two Universities instead of the existing one, n proposal that most neople who know bow costlv Universities are- would refrain from making, except in a time of prosperity. But when the committee began to .reflect on the duplication of the work. administrative, teaol'incr and- examining.. its power in the f-'itli of the treasure trove began to fail-: and it bad to resort to another Utonian scheme-—viv,., that this extra work would bo done for nothing; but lest it might be too much for human nature and human physique, the. committee proposed, to cut - out
University ... examinations,.- .including those external >examinations by, examiners in England-, ignoring the fact that in competitive examiations, as for scholarships and honours degrees, it is absolutely necessary where there is more than one teaching body taking part in the competition, and even when there is no competitive element, it is of great value to a teaching Universtiy so far from the great Eurojiea'n centres to have the stimulus to the study of the newest problems and their solution that is provided by the annual reports of the foremost scholars of the day. “But not even, this alleviation of the labour to be placed on .the shoulders of the staffs went far in the direction of the cue concerning the adequacy of salaries they had adopted from their predecessors, the commission of 1923. On the contrary, by taking away from the professors the fees for examining; the committee wold in effect f'-Hlier reduce professorial, emoluments.”
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Hokitika Guardian, 16 January 1931, Page 3
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993THE EDUCATION REPORT Hokitika Guardian, 16 January 1931, Page 3
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