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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 5, June 8th, 1949.
[Introduction]
Attacks on the Educational Policy of the present Government are commonplace, but when a University publication devotes a front page to such an attack it might be expected that the attack would be reasoned, factual, and logical. It might also be expected that the critic would at least take care to understand what he was attacking. If the lamentable ignorance of the fundamental aims of modern education demonstrated by the recent front page article of our "contemporary," is any indication of a general misunderstanding it is time Salient devoted a little time and space to the question of educational aims.
The common cry in almost every newspaper article on education now, is the lowering of standards of attainment. "Children ain't what they used to be in my young days." It is significant that the subjects which are always chosen as exemplifying this lowered standard are spelling, writing and arithmetic.
And from where do the complaints come? Largely from business men. Their chief moan, is of course, that children are no longer solely fitted to become good clerks, and their implicit assumption is that the aim of education is to prepare children to fit neatly into their place in office or industry. "In the good old days," they say, "children who came out of schools could write, spell, and add, fluently and accurately." This, they maintain is no longer the case.