BIAS OF TEACHERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 57, 8 March 1944, Page 3

BIAS OF TEACHERS

URBAN LIFE PREFERRED WIDER TRAINING ADVOCATED (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. In referring to New Zealand's education system in the House of Representatives last, night Mr. Oram (Nat., Manawatu) said that too often at the present time were the teachers out of sympathy with country life and lacked an understanding of what it had to offer. Too often they looked upon their obligatory period in the country as a period of banishment, to be brought to an end as soon as possible.

What was needed, he said, was to bring the training colleges, or some of them, or new ones to be established, into closer contact with the agricultural colleges, enabling special teachers to take their third year in those colleges and enabling all in the training colleges to get a background of agricultural- training and an understanding of what rural life had to offer.

Mr. Oram believed great development was going to come from a systematic but cautious extension of the intermediate school idea.

Dealing with the university, he advocated students being occupied full-time and also urged the extension of the present bursary system and a bold and vigorous policy in the establishment of hostels, which had been so shockingly neglected in the past. This applied not only to university students, but also in respect of all young people who had to come into the larger cities to join the civil service or take up other occupations. He also urged the need of the establishment of a school of veterinary science. New Zealand had only 86' fully qualified veterinarians, which was a woefully small number.