EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17692, 1 August 1919, Page 8

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS

CO-ORDINATION. [Communicated.] Among the many features of our education system tbftt arra coming under the soaiclilight of criticism there is probably none that will better repay scrutiny than tho laok of connection between tho various stages of school life. Beginning at tho bottom and working upwards irom tho frco kindergartens conducted by subsidised effort# in tho larger towns, to the university, which sliouJd crown the odifice of public education, tho observer is at all stages made awaro of a lack of that long-sighted policy that should bo tho directing motivo of tho wholo scheme. Tho free kindergartens as yot perform a relatively small and independent function; but they arc symptomatic of developments that will mature as time goes on. At present they deal with children under five years of age; and from them tho children pass into tho preparatory departments of the primary school. They experience in the change something in tho nature of a revolution; for though they are still of kindergarten age, the schools they enter, in most cases, are not adapted in tho best manner for carrying on the work that ha 3 been begun. Floor-space, equipment, and the size of classee combine to render them impossible. Bad as thra break is between the kindergarten and tho primary school, that between the primary and post-primary, whether secondary or technical, is very much worse. Tins doee not apply with such force in the district high schools ol the smallsr towns, for in these there is an opportunity for basing tho work of the secondary department on that -of tho primary department through which the pupils have passed. But in the larger towns., where the pupils pass from tho Sixth Standard to tho secondary or technical schools, tho 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 timo to evolve a style and atmosphere suited to tho functions they will be called on to perform. Tho secondary schools, on the other hand, are to ail 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 tbay should serve in this young country than to tho maintenance of the forms and traditions of tho class institutions of tho Old Land. This is a feature that needs radical alteration without loss of time, and for two main reasons. The first of theso is that in a democratic community such as ours classifications should bo discountenanced rather than fostered. Our secondary schopls are not, and arc not intended to be, class schools, and the forms and traditions that have been borrowed from the class institutions of Old Land should give place fco others more in conformity with the functions our schools have to fulfil among our own people. The schools are almost wholly supported by public funds and should be made to serve tho 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 process of growth, proceeding along a path regularly graded from 'kindergarten to university—not a path where each is compiled to take the same steps in the same time, but where each can find means of doing the best he 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 earlier stages, ihis is where the lack of a co-ordinating directing power is most severely felt. Speaking generally, the secondary schools take no cognisance of the has been done m th c primary sohoo's. They have their awn cut-and-dried programme, which has no relation to what has gone before, and, as far as can be soon, no forward vision of what is to come after, except in respect of the small proportion of students whose objective is matriculation and the univery* The result is that a very 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 take the jump turn aside from the' quest and loin the ranks of those whose higher education has been neglected. It is a very familiar phrase, this of a "negleoed education." and few people stop to consider all that it implies. It implies tho waste of much fmo material, both of brain and character, that might have been turned to account to the great profit of the community and the individual. It means that capacities for life and work have become atrophied for lack of cultivation It means tho declining into second _or third rate citizenship of those who might have been first rate. It means that the power of the individual to contribute to the common good has been allowed to fade rnv, or at the least has not been allowed to fade away, or. at least, has not lwen given an opportunity to grow. That is the kind of loss which the nation and its citizens are suffering because of the want of some authority that can give unity a.nd eo-ordmation to the operations of tho different parts of our educational machine.