SECONDARY SCHOOLS’ EDUCATION

Otago Witness, Issue 4031, 16 June 1931, Page 22

SECONDARY SCHOOLS’ EDUCATION

PROGRESSIVE AND SOUND Mr F. Milner, president of the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Association, writes: — Owing to current misrepresentation of the scope and aims of secondary education in New Zealand, and subsequent depreciation which has been intensified since the publication of the Parliamentary Recess Committee’s report on education, I have, on behalf of the Secondary Schools’ Association. to ask you to give in your columns the fullest publicity to the attached official data. It is our contention that these figures prove that our schools, by the institution of differentiated courses, are working out a liberal interpretation of their province. While realising their paramount spiritual aim in moulding and inspiring character, and in interpreting and transmitting the intellectual heritage of their generation, they are, both by the provision of parallel courses in school and by the organisation of a rich array of extra-curricular interests, giving evidence of a latitude and liberality of view which is an effective rebuttal of the criticisms of their policy. It has become the fashion to belittle secondary education and to identify it with the discredited classical regime of the past. LIBERAL EDUCATION. Secondary education is a training for life, and should not be specifically directed to training for a livelihood. Its object is not technical efficiency. It aims at the general development of the powers of the mind. Above all it is a spiritual process wherein the humanities must dominate. Secondary education inspires the ideals and moulds the character of the young generation at a most formative period. It is more important that their ideals should be high, their sympathies wide, their conduct sound, than that they be prematurely expert in technique or crammed with utilitarian instruction. The traditions and communal loyalties of a good secondary school exercise valuable formative influence on character, and so constitute a real national asset. The atmosphere of a good school permeates the whole life. Hence the British Board'of Education officially recognises the paramount educational value of the imponderables. Cruder and materialistic valuations pass current only in young communities. A COMPREHENSIVE IDEAL.

If, as we claim, our secondary schools strive to realise this humanistic ideal, and at the same time provide full facilities for diagnosis of interests and subsequent pre-vocational work on intensive lines, we assert without fear of challenge that such theory and such practice are endorsed by the best educational opinion. Far from being homes of cloistered idealism, our secondary schools are rapidly achieving an harmonious synthesis of the humanistic and the technical. Their ideal is a large and liberal atmosphere coordinating the cultural with the practical. Our secondary school leaders support the earlier introduction of pupils from the primary schools to secondary education. This will afford facilities for a working

diagnosis of the pupil’s interests and capacities as determined by his reaction to a wide range of subjects. Then follows on this liberal foundation the institution of four or five courses (e.g., professional, commercial, agricultural, industrial, domestic science, arts, and crafts) on pre-vocational lines, developing intensively the pupil’s special aptitudes and linking him up with life. So long as there are safeguards against premature specialisation, this form of secondary education, making intensive provision for the broad categories of pupil’s interests, is in complete harmony with progressive educational thought. To-day the whole of North America is working out secondary education along these lines by means of the composite-multiple-course school. In England, Yorkshire is experimenting with it successfully, and the National Union of Teachers, the most influential educational body in England, is clamouring for its realisation as its ideal in post-primary education: finally. The Times Educational Supplement has given it full benediction. In the case of each course there is a common cultural core of humanism (English. English literature and history) which redeems it from utilitarianism. SECONDARY EDUCATION PROGRESSIVE AND RELATED TO LIFE. We emphasise that our secondary schools are not static. They have proved responsive to new ideas. Their educational ideal is progressive and sound. They train for life as well as for livelihood. Their aim is the enrichment of personality with perennial interests, and the development of the full humanity of the pupil. In the past, under the acid test of war, their output has not been found wanting. We claim that in the moral sphere of citizenship their training for loyalty, for public service, and for discharge of responsibility are qualities which have been increasingly manifested in public life by their pupils. OFFICIAL DATA AS TO DIFFERENTIATED COURSES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. There are 44 departmental secondary schools in New Zealand: 29 of these are attended by boys, and 31 by girls. The latest information available regarding courses of instruction shows that during the past three years commercial courses have been in existence in all but five schools, agricultural courses in 15 schools, industrial courses for boys in eight schools, and home life courses for girls in 18. Special courses, other than these, of a more or less vocational character, were provided in six schools. In over two-thirds of the schools pupils were also given the opportunity of following professional courses which did not include Latin.

In 1930 only 42.8 per cent, of the boys and 30.5 per cent, of the girls were taught Latin —a decrease of 3 per cent, in each case from the figures for 1928. Twenty-seven point eight per cent, of the girls did not learn mathematics. In 1930 drawing was taught in practically every school, and was taken by 51.0 per cent, of the boys and 53.7 per cent, of the girls. The subject was not. limited to freehand drawing, but various branches, such as machine drawing, building plans, blackboard illustration, poster work and studies from life, were freely included.

Arts and crafts, apart from drawing, were taught in eight schools attended by girls. Needlework was learned by 44.3 per cent, of the girls, and cookery by 23.2 per cent. A considerable number. of girls learn both subjects, and all girls learn at least one of these during their school course.

Bookkeeping was taught in 40 schools, and was taken by 23.8 per cent, of all boys and 26.2 per cent, of all girls. Shorthand and typing were taught in 28 schools, and were taken by 24.7 per cent, of all girls. Twenty-two of the schools attended by boys taught woodwork, and 21 per cent, of all boys were learning the subject as against 13 per cent, in 1928. Seven schools also taught metalwork. The percentage of boys learning woodwork may appear somewhat small, but it represents 32.6 per cent, of the boys in Forms 111 and IV. Woodwork is not usually taught to senior boys, even in technical schools, as pupils, following manual courses do not as a rule stay at school for a third year. Seventeen schools taught agriculture, including in most cases dairy science; the percentage of boys taking the subject was 9.9, as compared with 9.6 in 1929 and 10.0 in 1928.

Such subjects as economics, mercantile law, accountancy, woolclassing, home nursing, surveying and astronomy, were taught in a few schools, and technical subjects, such as electrical engineering, building construction, motor engines and steam engines, have now been added to the curriculum.