Rural Education.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 17019, 16 December 1920, Page 6

Rural Education.

The Progress League has done a useful thing in ■ including in its activities the task .of promoting an enlightened scheme of rural education. The preliminary report brought down bv the special committee set up by Ihe League to consider the subject indicates that tho committee has not been afraid to Inke very broad views of the educational needs of the rural community. Such views nro needed to-day. Tho whole aim of life may not be to increase production, but that aim occupies a most important place among "New Zealand's and the world's requirements. Haphazard methods must give place to scientific means of making -the earth yield her increase and no education ilirected to that end can be regarded as waste- of time. Further, there is great need both to raise tho standard of rural education, partly to prevent the drift to thp towns being encouraged by the fact that better education is available in tho towns than in the country, and partly because there is every reason why the country child who is not sent in to a town secondary school should enjoy tho same educational privileges, more or less specialised to suit tho purpose of his future career, as are open to the town child. The figures quoted at yesterday's meeting by Mr Strachan, principal of the Rangiora High School, regarding the neglect in many instances of the cultural education of the child are arTosting. As the result of circularising the r.ural schools of Canterbury the League's special committee ascertained that of the children attending these schools who left school last year only

19 per cent, passed Standard 6, and 23 per cent, had only passed Standard 4. Of those who passed Standard 6, 41 per cent, went no further with their educa'i:on, while SO per cent, of those who did not even reach that standard went no further. . For a country that has been apt to pride itself upon its fine system of education —"from tho primer "lass to the university"—this is a painfully poor showing. It means that we arc allowing a considerable proportion nf our young people to grow up wit a Tew of the advantages of real education and with little knowletW beyond that of "the three R's." Circumstances we know occasionally compel a child's parents to withdraw it from school at a too early age, but too often, we are afraid, .1 child's education is thus cut short cither from ignorance or greed or from the fear that further education, especially in town, would operate against a child adopting rural pursuits. To meet these various . cases Mr Strachan and Mr Holford outlined a scheme of organisation for rural education which, so far as one can gather, covers the ground completely. Tho scheme may be open to criticism in 0110 or two respects, and if that i 3 the case, we may be sure that its opponents will make the most of them. But so far as ono can judge—it must bo remembered that the committee's report was only a preliminary one —tho scheme is an honest attempt to correct certain great defects in the country's educational system and as such it deserves to be considered sympathetically. A point stressed by more than one of tho speakers was that rural school consolidation would assist tho development of rural education. Tho consolidation of country schools is a reform which lias been urged on several occasions lately in these columns. Such schools could not only be made centres of culture, but would provide the means of affording the specialised training which is required by the country boy who means to be a In this consolidated school, with its'surrounding block of garden, farm land, and orchard lies, we "believe, the hope of such an increase of rural secondary education as shall remove the slur at present resting on our education system. In urging the reform which it has taken in hand upon the Education Department, the Progress League no doubt realises that it is in for a stiff struggle. Fortunately lack of courage and resolution have never been among the League's faults.