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Entry type: Book Call Number: 2293 Barcode: 31290036131969
  • Publication Date

    1967

  • Place of Publication

    Hobart

  • Book-plate

    Yes

  • Edition

    First

  • Number of Pages

    15

  • Publication Info

    softcover

Copy specific notes

Some underlining and highlighting in pencil throughout text including passages: [p. 2] “consider what else besides money is needed if the education programme is to be expanded along sound lines, and thereby to achieve a return for the community commensurate with its increasing investment […] By procedures not yet sufficiently defined a better balance needs to be established between these various objectives: the mental, the moral, and the vocational […] It seems that university graduates lack to a greater degree than the disadvantaged the qualities of thoughtfulness and goodness, precisely because higher education is no longer a means toward the development of contemplative men and women. On the contrary it breeds competitive man in all his ferocity.”; [p. 3] “Our academics have been turned into competitive individuals by the grant system. They are no longer able to convey the broad and disinterested viewpoint […] “The community is ever being urged to provide more and still more funds for post-graduate studies. Should it be willing to put up the money to enable every person who thinks he might be good at research to try his hand at it? Bear in mind that those who are misplaced in the post-graduate work – and there are many – might be doing a more useful job elsewhere, some of them by passing on their knowledge in secondary schools or in tertiary institutions outside the traditional universities. Perhaps these problems too are largely sociological, but the decisions concerning them have a strong impact on education.”; [p. 4] “An educational system has to be built around individuals, educators, and the difficulty is to find enough who are both dedicated and talented […] our Australian university system has been expanded at slightly too fast a rate during the past ten years; that quality has suffered, though not irretrievably, and that too many students with poor prospects of success have been admitted both to undergraduate and post-graduate courses. The quota system has saved a lot of long-term disappointment! Had matriculation and selection criteria both been tightened, much frustration would have been avoided […] The rate-determining step in building up a sound educational system, the slowest step, is the selection and training of staff. If a community agrees it is desirable to double the number of place for university students it will have to show much patience, for it is impossible [p. 5] suddenly to produce or recruit double the number of talented lecturers and professors. This might take up to twenty years, for the whole world is short of them.”; [p. 6] “Mr. C. G. McGrath, the Managing Director of Repco, has pointed out that talent is where one finds it. Only one person associated with the development of the world-beating Repco-Brabham engine had formal engineering training, but who would dare to say that self education was lacking in them all.”; [p. 7] “Some people, myself included, would regard a cab-horse as more useful than a racehorse, especially a mediocre one. Useful lives are lived by many who are not academically minded, and training for and service in the trades is just as important as that for the professions. I have a great admiration for the skilled artisan.”; [p. 8] “The quality of the education system is bound up with the quality of the examinations […] Within British universities only spasmodic attempts are made to assess the teaching performance of individual lecturers and professors: their advancement is based almost exclusively on research performance. [p. 9] In U.S.A. the phrase “publish or perish” describes the situation in many universities with tolerable accuracy […] Might I suggest it would be a good plan for the administration to submit a questionnaire to each graduating student from college or university, asking him to assess the teaching ability of those members of the college or university staffs with whom he has come in contact.”; [p. 10] “Some taxpayers, including myself, would like to see the universities preaching the gospel that more graduates must move into the industry […] Even the great chemical companies of the U.S.A. are finding it difficult to entice men into their research departments from the comfortable life of the universities.”; [p. 11] “Apparently [education] has been lacking in a presentation of the moral issues of life and of the desirability of service to the community.”; [p. 12] “Sir Robert Menzies has repeatedly stressed the need for unrestricted backing of quality – quality of mind in particular.”; [p. 15] “Surely it is not hoping too much that through education, and the contemplation it should induce, human beings will learn to respect differences among themselves, will seek to encourage the best that is latent in every one of us, and will strive to make the world a pleasant and stimulating place in which future generations may enjoy life to the full.”

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