VALUE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Views Of College Principal
“It has long been urged by us as inequitable that candidates for engineering, architecture, agriculture, fine and applied arts, home science or accountancy should be required to take a foreign language as a compulsory subject in the university entrance examination. In practically all cases the language is not carried to a higher stage in subsequent university work, and nonpossession of a language sense is no proof that a student is unsuited for advanced study along the lines I have indicated,” said Mr C. A. Stewart, principal of the Southland Technical College in the course of his report to the college board at its meeting last night. "We are therefore hopeful,” Mr Stewart added, "that the changes in the university entrance tests now being considered in conjunction with the principle of accrediting will result in our being freed from the necessity of having to spend valuable school time on a subject the value of which is not apparent to us. We feel that the reforms about to be introduced will almost certainly be to the advantage of our type of school. Details of the accrediting scheme will, of course, closely concern us; the needs of our evening students must receive fair attention, and we do not wish to be asked to accredit such part-time students. We assume that such students will still be required to sit for the entrance examination, along, no doubt, with any such candidates as are not accredited but still wish to present themselves.” TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS Another interesting point made by Mr Stewart in his report was that the type of mathematics taught in New Zealand postprimary schools in future would almost certainly be modernized as a result of the work done in the last three years with A.T.C. and Air Force pre-entry classes. The syllabus and methods followed in this work had been almost exactly on the lines followed in recent years in the technical schools, with the emphasis on practical applications rather than on formal and academic preliminaries and theory.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ST19421023.2.19
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Southland Times, Issue 24882, 23 October 1942, Page 3
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343VALUE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES Southland Times, Issue 24882, 23 October 1942, Page 3
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