THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 1927. AIMS IN EDUCATION.

Wairarapa Age, 2 March 1927, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 1927. AIMS IN EDUCATION.

A noteworthy feature of a recent report of the Consulative Committee of the English Board of Education is the emphasis it sets upon the advisability Of providing varied courses of education in secondary schools. As its report was summarised by Mr. J. H. Howell, Director of the Wellington Technical College, the committee recommends that secondary education should be given in: —(1) schools of the ordinary secondary type retaining their pupils past the age of 16; (2) specialist central schools giving a four years' course with a practical trend in the last two years; (3) non-specialist central schools; (4) senior classes or central departments where it is impossible to make provision for schools of type 1,2, and 3. The second and third types are to be called miodern schools, and during the last two years the treatment of the subjects in the curriculum ‘should be practical in the broadest sense and brought directly into relation with the facts of everyday life; school work being connected with the interest arising from social and industrial environment of the pupils. Every effort should be made to secure a close connection between the work in school and the pupil’s further education after leaving. In no sense should the modern schools be inferior to the grammar schools or ordinary secondary schools, with due allowance for the age of the pupils and the character of the curriculum, the construction and equipment of modern schools should approximate to the standard required by the board for grammar schools.'

In Great Britain, as in this country, ideas as to the relative numbers in which secondary schools of the various types should be developed are as yet uncertain, but real educational progress undoubtedly will be made where unimpeded scope is given for the development of schools of each type.

The idea that, needs to be thrown overboard, and that evidently has been thrown overboard by the English committee above quoted, is that there is some wonderful virtue in an academic education which it superior to all other forms of education. Fallacious as it is, this idea, persists in all sorts of queer expressions, and it may be a long time yet before it is eradicated. It will be defeated decisively here and in other, countries, however, as soon as we have so far broken away from obsolete ideas as to be able to try cut different forms of seeondry schools on their merits. There is great need in New Zealand, as well as in England, of modern secondary schools provided with a curriculum “practical in the broadest sense and brought directly into relation with the facts of everyday life.” It is clear, too, that if such schools are to realise the>* full possibilities, they must bo developed independently and not as mere attachments to schools of a different and more familiar type, committed to wholly different aims.