EDUCATIONAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2016, 16 August 1919, Page 1

EDUCATIONAL.

CO-ORDINATION,

Among the many features of our education system that are coming under the .searchlight of criticism there is probably none that will better repay scrutiny than the lack of connection between the various stages of school life. Beginning at the bottom and working upwards from the free kindergartens conducted by subsidised voluntary efforts in the larger towns, to the university which should crown the edifice of public education, the observer is at all stages made aware of a lack of that long-sighted policy that should be the directing motive of the whole scheme. The free kindergartens as yet perform a relatively sniall and independent function; but they are symptomatic of* developments that will mature as time goes on. At present they deal with children under live years of age; ami from them the children pass into the preparatory departments of the primary school. They experience in the change something in the nature of a revolution; for though they are still of kindergarten age, the schools they enter, hr most cases, are not adapted in the- best manner for carrying on the work that has been begun. Floor-space, equipment, and the size of classes combine to render this impossible.

Bud as 1 he break is between llie kimlengarlen and the primary school, that between the primary and the. post-primary, whether secondary or technical, is very much worse. This does not; apply with sneh force in the District High Schools of the smaller towns, for in these there is an opportunity for basin" the work of the secondary department on that of the primary department throng'll which the pupils have passed. But in the larger towns, where the pupils pass from the sixth standard to the secondary or technical school, the transition is comparable to that of an emigrant going into a foreign country. The technical schools are a new and immature native growth, and may be expected in due lime to evolve a style and atmosphere suited to the functions they will be called on to perform. The secondary schools, on the other hand, are to all practical intents an exotic importation. They are modelled, for the- most part, on the English public school, so called, and pay less regard to the function they .should serve in this young country than to the maintenance of the forms and traditions of the class institutions of the Old Lund. This is a feature that needs radical alteration without loss of time, and for two main reasons. The first of these is that in a democi’atic community such as ours class distinctions should be discountenanced rather than fostered. Our secondary schools are not, and are not intended to be, class schools, and the forms and traditions that have been borrowed from the class institutions of the Old Land should give place to others more in conformity with the functions our schools have to fulfill among our own people. The schools are almost wholly supported by public funds, and should be made to serve the needs of the whole of the people, not any section of them. The second reason is inherent in the nature of education itself. Education is, or ought to be, a progress, a progress of growth/ proceeding along a path regularly graded from kindergarten to university —not a

path where each is compelled to take the same steps in the same time, but where each can find means of doing the best lie has it in him to do, and can do it effectively because of the sure preparation that has been made for the doing in the earli-er-stages. This is where the lack of a co-ordinating directing power is most severely felt. Speaking generally, the secondary schools

take no cognisance of the work that has been done in the primary schools. They have their own cutand dried programme, which has no relation to what has gone before, and, as far as can be seen, no forward vision of what is to come after, except in respect of the small proportion of students whose objective is matriculation and the university. The result is that a vcyy large proportion of those who pass up from the primary schools find their pathway intersected by a chasm which is too wide for them to jump. Those who cannot, lake (he jump (urn aside from the quest and join the ranks of those whose higher education has been neglected.

It is a very familiar phrase, this of a “neglected education,” and few people stop to consider all that it implies. It implies the waste of much fine material, both of brain and character, that might have been turned to account to the great prolit of the community and the individual. It means that capacities for life and work have become atrophied for lack of cultivation. It means the declining into second or third rate citizenship of those who might have been lirst-rale. It means that the power of the individual to con-tribute-to the common good has been allowed to fade away, or at (he least has not been given an opportunity to grow. That is the kind of loss that the nation and its citizens are suffering because of the want of some authority that can give unity and co-ordination to the operations of (he different parts of our educational machine.