Tangles and Dilemmas

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 654, 18 January 1952, Page 20

Tangles and Dilemmas

[HE District High School, says H. C. DENT, editor of "The Times" Educational Supplement, is New Zealand’s version of the tangle every country has got into over the relative status of teachers. Other educational problems and dilemmas werte also discussed by Mr, Dent the other evening -in a broadcast heard from the National stations. Excerpts from this talk appear below.

I have had in New Zealand, ‘is, of course, not nearly long enough to get under the skin of a country’s educational system. All I can pretend to give you is a few impressions gleaned in a succession of all too hurried visits. But I must say how pleasantly impressed I have been by the schools I’ve visited. I’ve spent some time in 18 of them; mainly High Schools and District High Schools, but also some Primary and three Intermediate Schools ... I felt quite at home in your newer school buildirigs. Their layout, architecture and equipment are not unlike those we are building in England-and incidentally we have. the same profusion of "pre-fabs." You do not perhaps make quite such varied use of colour in interior decoration, and your classroom furniture is generally heavier and more solid. Your wood and metal shopsespecially the latter-in the High Schools and District High Schools are more elaborately equipped with machine tools than are most English Secondary Schools, but your home science rooms seem to. have rather less in the way of equipment. You have | some shocking older buildings; but so have we, with usually far less playing space around them. The few primary classes I saw gave me the impression that their work is be days, which is all

on more formal lines than in England, While most of their. walls’ were. gay with . children’s drawings, and ..some with friezes and __ brightly-coloured prints, I missed the wealth of toys and other teaching material (much of it made by the teachers and the children) which I would find in any good English infants’ or junior school; flash cards for reading and numbers, cans and balances for weighing and measuring, grocers’ shops, Wendy houses, nature tables, cutouts, models in clay and plasticine, puppets and so on. I missed, too, the busy but orderly "family" bustle of group and individual activity so typical of our primary schools. I am told that. all these are to be found in New Zealand schools; and also that, as in England, there has recently been among teachers something of a reaction against excess of activity and freedom in the Primary School. That is probably all to the good, for. liberty can all too easily deteriorate into license. But from what I have seen and heard I do not think you are in much danger of over-stressing activity and néglecting the formal aspects of Primary education. Your standards in the "three Rs" are, I should say, generally higher than ours. : ; Your intermediate schools interest me more than any other part of your educational system. They are, I believe, unique. So far as I know, no other country has deliberately created a school

between’ Primary and Secondary education for the express purpose of diagnosing children’s abilities, aptitudes \ and interests, and so of ens abling them to pass on to appropriate forms of Secondary education: I have myself for many years advocated this idea of a ‘diagnostic period, and so*you can imagine my excitement at being able to visit schools designed to carry it. out, But I must — confess that I am left with something of-a sense of. dis appointment and frustration. For I. find among teachers and administrators in New Zealand two divergent — and perhaps mutually exclusive — opinions about the function of the Intermediate School, One is that it should be, as I have sug gested, purely a diagnostic school, which will pass on all its pupils after two years into the High School. The other is that, while it should pass on its more intellectually able pupils to High School, it should also act as a finishing

school, so to speak, for the rest by providing for them a three or even fouryear course. I'm not at all sure that these conflicting concepts can be reconciled. I am still less sure that a single school can successfully carry out simultaneously the two functions, of diagnosis of the abler and a full secondary education for the less able pupils which the second concept involves (by "successfully" I mean with the utmost benefit to all the children concerned). But what bothers me immediately is that this divergence of opinion about the function of the Intermediate School seems to be preventing the existing schools from performing either function as well as they could; and I am very glad to learn that a committee has been investigating this tricky problem. The District High School, a form of organisation imposed upon you by great distances and sparsely populated areas. presents difficult educational problems. The schools I visited were without exception delightful places, but like so many of your teachers I’m not too happy about the present District High School set-up. I am a firm believer in the value of a school to a small community and a convinced opponent of young children having to travel a long way to school. So I am very glad indeed to learn of proposals to retain primary schools in small settlements, and consolidate only Intermediate and Secondary Schools. The small school, especially if a sole teacher school, demands a man _ or woman (better still, a married couple) of real quality. But from what I saw of the students in your Training Colleges, including what you irreverently call "pressure cookers,’ you should not lack these. The District High School _ presents most obviously to an English visitor your version of the tangle every country has got into over the relative status of teachers. Primary and Secondary: are they different orders of human beings? If not, why subject them to different professional procedures and codes of etiquette which suggest they are? There are flaws in that argument, I know, but not in the general principle underlying it: one profession equally honoured in all its parts. From that you will’ probably -gather that I don’t like your grading system for Primary teachers, Quite right; I don’t. ' What other profession would tolerate being examined and marked for profes-. sional efficiency every year or two, and a system which effectively prevents the rapid promotion of its ablest members? further question: What are you going to make of your Uniyersity? Is it to be an omnium gatherum to which all are entitled to go who have successfully passed through High School? Or a select institution in which you nourish with scholarly care. the ablest men and women you pfoduce? Or an attempt at compromise between these two. extremes? I’m not going to answer the question for you; it’s yours to decide, according to your own best judgment. I} will say only this: never did the world stand in more need of disciplined yet eager minds and character of the finest quality.