NEW OUTLOOK ON EDUCATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 386, 15 November 1946, Page 12

NEW OUTLOOK ON EDUCATION

| Changes In France And Poland

frequently feel overwhelmed by the encyclopedic "culture" of Europeans whom they meet as visitors or as refugee immigrants, would regain much selfrespect after chatting with Mlle. Jeanne Chaton and Dr. Maria Sebrovska, two delegates to the recent New Education Fellowship Conference in Australia who are passing homeward through New Zealand. Dr. Sebrovska (whom we interviewed for our last issue about radio in Poland) is Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology in the University of Warsaw, and Mlle. Chaton teaches in a Parisian College and is a Member of the Legion of Honour. Accordingly, as one would expect, their personal range of intellectual and artistic interests and their command of English in which to express them more than reaches the standard we have come to expect in educated continentals. But both are dissatisfied with Europe’s culture and education. -For-they separately informed The Listener-it has hitherto been almost wholly the possession of ‘one class. And both’ enthusiastically described drives in Eastern and Western Europe -respectivelly to "democratise" education and to share its benefits among ‘the people as a whole-"as you do in New Zealand." N te ZEALANDERS who Democracy Grew Underground "Right ‘up to last year," said Mlle. Chaton, "technical schools were not looked upon as Education in France. The Ministry of Education had no control over them or interest in them. They were left to big factories to run for their own employees, or to the Ministry of Production and Industry. But at the same time the education in the established secondary schools had become so academic that it, too, was a sort of technical training-a gaining of ancient or modern book knowledge as a groundwork for professional jobs. Long, long before the war many of us teachers were very dissatisfied with this, of course. But we could do ‘nothing. Parents insisted that their children must take the old courses to be sure of getting the sort of positions ‘that they traditionally led to. And they valued the two quite different products of the two quite different kinds of schools-the academic school on the one hand and the elementary and then trade‘training schools on the other-because liked society to consist of two distinct classes, the bourgeoisie and the workers." Then the war must have brought a real revolution in outlook to France, we commented. It had indeed, said Mlle, Chaton. "The direction into which the Vichy men tried to turn our development precipitated contrary ideas that had before been too uncertain among us to form themselves clearly. French people realised that democracy had to extend beond constitutional matters into everyday relationships. Underground, the teachers

planned a new kind of democratic -education to enable the youth of France to defend themselves against the evil forces to which their elders* had succumbed. At liberation we seemed all united for this. But since then in every sphere the old forces have had time to re-form their ranks. Yet we cannot go back. Women will stay full citizens. ‘Equal pay for equal work’-as you call it-will continue. The peasants more and more will form unions for buying tools and marketing their produce and we shall have one education system-not two any more." "A Real Revolution" "But children at some stage must begin specialising, mustn’t they?" "Our French schools," replied Mlle. Chaton, "will not only provide for that, they will henceforth concentrate between 11 and 16 on giving children means to discover what they are best fitted to do and to enjoy doing. In the mornings the children will all work together at ‘core subjects.’ But in the afternoons each will follow his own ‘option.’. Children who do badly with their option will, after two years at most, be advised to switch to some other course and free tuition will have to be denied if they keep persisting against the advice of the committee of all their teachers together. But children who seem to have suited themselves will specialise more and more year after year-though the University can, we hope, be reached by the most capable in every line, whether it is technical or academic. This is all very obvious, no doubt, to people in your new, free and democratic country," concluded Mile. Chaton. "But for us in bourgeois Europe it is a real revolution." Position in Poland Dr. Sebrovska spoke of a_ similar change of attitude in the eastern European countries and of their similar creation of one new "classless" education system out of the pre-war two systems, (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Poland had had universal elementary schooling during the ‘thirties -- though even that had ceased for two’ million children along the German border during the Occupation. But it had begun too late and finished too soon for peasants’ and workers’ children. "In 60% of our families both parents are working all-day," said Dr. Sebrovska. "Yet before the war kindergartens looked after only 2% of the children. Even to-day they can take only 12%although we have 1,100,000 war orphans and another 900,000 children who are fatherless. But I believe education should start at four years old for everyone in Poland, if only for physical reasons; children in) kindergartens would at least be better fed than they are at present, even in the country. But you know how we are poor. And. although we take one nds of girls from the villages to be teachers we cannot train teachers fast enough." At the other end of childhood, fulltime vocational training from 15 years of age up was being planned for Poland. The day of evening lessons was past. Instead young employees would, for four years, each week spend 18 hours out of their work-time in technical classes, and at the end of this course access to the University would be just as much available to the ablest of these employees as to pupils who spent their ‘teen years at full-time schooling in more academic subjects. ‘