The Sun 42 WYNPHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1929 EDUCATIONAL FADDISTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 710, 9 July 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNPHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1929 EDUCATIONAL FADDISTS

OVER a long period of years the chief trouble with New Zealand’s educational system has been that, with Cabinet changes and changes of Government, it has passed through the hands of successive faddists, each exploiting whims and fancies of his own. With the accession to command of Mr. H. Atmore, there is no sign, that this tendency is at an end. Mr. Atmore, indeed, promises to introduce more queer notions than even the most enthusiastic of liis predecessors. Repeated changes of policy affeeting an ordinary State department may he of no lasting consequence, but in the case of the Education Department, which places the stamp of its efficiency or failure on the children of the nation, the effects may be disastrous. More sweeping changes are now foreshadowed, and thinking people cannot help wondering if the innovations so blithely heralded today will not be the exploded fallacies of tomorrow. Amid the generalities of Mr. Atmore’s pronouncements it is sometimes possible to discern a little of his real purpose. Me seems to entertain a profound suspicion of the secondary and technical school system. The technical system was introduced in 1900, and for years was accorded a flourish of trumpets whenever it was mentioned. Lately this enthusiasm has died away. The fact is that a large proportion of scholars at the so-called technical schools prefer to take an almost purely classical course leavened by only a moderate amount of manual or specialised technical instruction. The technical schools have, in fact, resolved themselves, with few exceptions, into glorified grammar schools with an academic tradition and accompanying frills. This phase of their evolution is viewed with evident distaste by educational theorists, yet the true lesson may he that these schools have developed along inevitable lines. Opinions differ as to the value of a technical training for a trade. Some employers welcome boys trained in the workshops of the technical schools, others would rather have had their apprentices in no hands save their own. The general inference is the inference adopted by a large section of the people, that technical training for a trade is not strictly necessary, and that if a boy is to be a tradesman lie may as well be a tradesman from the start and begin earning wages at once instead 6f bothering with further schooling after he has left the primary school. The fact that people have been inclined to send their children to technical schools for professional rather than for manual training is an endorsement of this conclusion, and the logical deduction from their common-sense interpretation is that irreparable harm might be done if a rash executive permitted the reduction of the structure that a legitimate demand has helped to build. The changed attitude toward technical schools is only one instance of the vacillating policy that has beset New Zealand education. The wavering and hesitancy attendant upon the development of the junior high school system serve only to emphasise it. Mr. Atmore favours conversion of all schooling between the ages of 11 and 15 into a series of elaborate experiments to determine the child’s natural aptitudes. Unfortunately there is no precedent to show whether the guessing conducted by the teachers will not, in 75 per cent, of cases, be wrong. Further, it is useless to spend three or four years in discovering that a boy has the natural talents of a gifted farrier and then to learn that, owing to the increasing popularity of the motor-ear, coupled with contemporary commercial depression, there are no places open to him in that select occupation. It is a climax of this character that might well drive a promising young blacksmith into one of the “white eollar professions” of which Mr. Atmore is so suspicious.