EDUCATIONAL REFORM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 44, 1 June 1910, Page 5

EDUCATIONAL REFORM.

THE WORTHLESSXESS OF CRAMMING. •UNIVERSITY REFORM. ASSOCIATION ESTABLISHED. By Telegraph —Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. A meeting was held in Wellington tonight to consider the question of University reform, and 1 was well attended. Mr. T. M. Will'onl, M.P., Mayor, presided, and several members of Parliament and University professors and other representative people were present. His Excellency the Governor telegraphed regretting he eoul.l not he present, and sympathising with the objects' of the meeting. A similar telegram was sent by the Prime Minister. A letter was read from Sir Robert Stout, Chief Justice, stating that for a great many years 'he had moved in the Senate with a view to having alterations made in the system of granting degrees and in the course of study iaid down in the calendar. The' Hon. G. Fowhls, Minister of Education, telegraphed welcoming the growing interest in higher education, and hoping the meeting would result in quickening that interest. Professor Von Zedli-tz said' it was an old reproach ■against the University that it taught any amount of ideas and academic knowledge, and that students were left no more useful members of the commercial and industrially productive community. The Professorial Board felt they were recipients of public money and could not go on practising a fraud upon the public without stating they would like to escape from it, but were*powerless owing to the system existing. Justice was being done to students. At the .present there was nothing to prevent a professor simply coaching his students for examination, but if that were done lie would be neglecting the true .professorial work. The temptation, however, was tremendous, for nobody was to care, nobody was toikn.ow, and if any critic arose they could ahviavs point to examination results. In England external examination was one of the things that clogged any chance of progress. He went at length 'into technical details showing the weakness of the present system. Professor Easter field made an earnest appeal for reform on behalf of the students themselves. He condemned the system of general culture and insistence that a student shall take so many subjects that have no direct bearing on his future work, in order that he shall know something outside of the particular subject he may wish to follow up. A .professor should as far as possilble get his students away from the examination system and induce in them the beliei that study of, say, science leaijs to little unless it leads to original thought and an endeavor to increase the sum total of scientific knowledge. If a student spent his time simply looking to examin-' •ations, iat the end of his course he could not give sufficient time to any one of his subjects to have begun to specialise. He felt «?o strongly about the injustice of the present system in this direction that if he found he could not stimulate his students in some way to do original work he would resign to-morrow. Mr. Harold H. Johnston moved a resolution, which was carried, ''Thtit it is advisable to iform a University Reform Association." Mr. (i. Hoglien, Inspector-General of Schools, in seconding, pointed out many directions in which the efforts to bring about improvements in the past had 'been defeated. Mr. A. L. Herd-man, M.P., urged that the system of University education should foe perfected. He believed what the two professors had' said showed the necessity for very close investigation being made into the .present condition of affairs. The majority of those present handed in their names as members of the association.