1.—13 a.

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[PBOFKSSOB VOX ZEDLITi.

that it would be very dangerous to trust to any one here without that clear grasp of whai is and what is not important, or what is and what is not essential, in making a university successful, without which the deliberations of a Commission or Committee of inquiry would be useless. Frankly that is it. Ido not think we have the material for having that knowledge, or, at least, for having that knowledge with the same clearness and power of exposition. You yourself, sir. might perfectly well understand—l do not know whether you do or do not —what are the methods by which certain ends are attempted to be attained in universities, but you would not have the power of illustration and experience of the working of other universities to draw upon, and consequently you would not have the power of putting before other members of an inquiring body with the same lucidity and force the whole situation as would a man whose experience of life had specially fitted him and trained him for that. 27. The Chairman.] You said previously, professor, that your students came to you illprepared I—Yes.1 —Yes. 28. In what respect , / —Well, because on the whole the secondary-school teachers in New Zealand an- not well equipped for teaching modern languages, and that the University, as far as I know, does not equip the graduates who have taken modern languages to be good teachers. I myself have had in my clashes now well over a hundred persons who are now engaged in teaching, and I have not trained them to know how to teach properly. One of the most urgent needs, in my opinion, for me is to bo allowed to give instruction to intending teachers in the methods of teaching modern languages. 29. Your remarks, then, only applied to the teaching of modern languages—you are speaking of your own students/--When 1 say they come ill-prepared 1 am speaking of my own students in my own subject, 30. Anil what would you suggest as a remedy for that?—ln modern languages—in French mainly—there is no remedy except the very slow one of gradually training adequate teachers in the University. There is no other remedy that I know of. 31. Then is the defect in the University or in the secondary school?— The University has been in existence for forty years or so. If during that time it had turned out any considerable number of well-equipped teachers the difficulty would, at any rate, not be so great, now as it is. 32. Then you think the University is at fault in that respect in the past?— Yes, unquestionably. It is my reproach against the University that, whereas it should have aimed among other things at the thorough equipment for their task of a body of men who were going to be teachers, it has mainly concerned itself with testing them by examination. That is the point. 33. You further stated that your students were not free to study : what am I to understand from that? —I think I will make clear to you what is in my mind best by giving you my own experiences when I came here. When I arrived in New Zealand I found that the degrees of the University were at thai time being bestowed on students without any sort of evidence that they had any knowledge of French as a living language, and any power to speak it or understand it as spoken. I found that whereas a University lecturer in modern languages is supposed to lecture in the language he is teaching that it would appear an absolute farce, because very lew if any of the members of the class would have understood it. 34. Mr. Mrf'ollum.} Does that apply to all colleges?—l am speaking of my own experience here. •').">. But with your knowledge of other colleges?—As far as I know it is the same that is to saw on this point I believe Professor Blunt sympathizes with me altogether. The first necessity seemed to me to be to organize the classes quite apart from the degree work in whioh I would train those students, and they were very eager and willing to be trained in the speaking and reading and oral use of the language. I did so, and the immediate result was this. One of m\ senior colleagues came to me and said. " You must not do that sort of thing, because that interferes with the whole idea and system of our University. Understand, you are a stranger here. These students are mostly engaged in teaching or in office-work throughout the day—the majority of them. They reach the College, which was then in the old Girls' School, at 5 o'clock, and they usually have two and sometimes three lectures to attend. That shows you how much time is left for private study or recreation, and a teacher needs this. He has hard work to do which is a stress on the nerves. Each subject is therefore on a low level, because that is all the time the students on the average can give, and all the energy they can give is that spare time. Each of us would like to improve the teaching in our own subject, but we must limit the hours to the absolute minimum in the training of our students, because with each student taking a number of subjects each professor would equally like to raise the standard. We would each of us like to do it, and if we all did it what would become of the student and his time.' The already overburdened student would be further overburdened. Therefore the professor must limit himself to what is requisite for getting the students up to the degree standard.' . Now, 1 gay thai no( as referring specially to my own subject, but to give this Committee the clearest possible illustration of the sort of result which is worked by the University of New Zealand. 36. Is it not common to all teachers of special subjects even in the secondary schools—they all want more time for their work and more effort from their students than they can gel .' Yes, but they pull together. •'■S7. The same limitation, though?— Yes, but in a school the headmaster organizes the whole thing, and it enables the effort to be directed. In a university, where there is as one legislating and examining body a joint union of all the professors, that body acts— perhaps ]"ss w,]\ than the headmaster—but does act as an organizing force for the concentration of efforts, so that the teachers as little as possible pull against one another. Our difficulty is that where there \.< no joint body of professors in that way inevitably the individual professor tends to pull separateh —that is to say, that the Dominion pays about £30.000 a year for the salaries of about forty