Evening Post. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1915. PRIMARY EDUCATION

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 146, 17 December 1915, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1915. PRIMARY EDUCATION

Tho Education Department is one of those in which it is least desirable that there should be any slackening of activity as the result of the war. The problems or education do not as a. rule raise cliffererices. of opinion of the kind or degree calculated to impair the sense of national unity, whose claims require the suspension of many forms of public during the war. On the other hand, education is one of the principal agencies to which we shall have to look for the increased national efficiency that will be needed after the war is over to repair the ravages that it has made. It is, therefore, very satisfactory to find that the new Minister of Education is taking his position seriously, and that, though that position is an honorary one, he is very far from regarding it as a sinecure. The energy which he is throwing-into the discharge of his duties 'and the value of the work that he is doing serve indeed to emphasise the invidious anomaly of his position as Minister without salary, and may suggest to his colleagues the propriety of devising a remedy. The qualifications which Mr. Hanan appears to have brought to hiswork as Minister of Education are an open and enquiring mind, a determination to find tilings out for himself, and a firm grasp of tho importance of sound foundations. The scope of education has been widened, varied, and humanised in all sorts of ways that were unknown to our forefathers, and these changes liavo almost all been in themselves of the nature of improvements. But there may be too much even of a. good t.hing, and an otherwise excellent programme may suffer seriously from being overloaded. Educational syllabuses have not escaped this danger. A laudable zeal for a wider ntid mgro varied curriculum has sraneiirafls vomited ia a diwij&tion

of energy and a distraction of mind of which the general effects have been less conducive to the true ends of education than the old-fashioned concentration upon a narrower and drier range of subjects. In so far as discipline, method, and the capacity for learning ar 6 of greater value for the child than the acquisition of in- ' formation, the older methods had advantages which in our zeal for improvement we have sometimes sacrificed.

Without any general disparagement of the new spirit in education or any championship of reactionary tendencies, the present Minister of Education has very | properly called attention to ihe importance of small things, and especially to the small things that constitute the foundations of the whole structure. "My recent visits to schools in various parts of the Dominion have made me more than ever convinced," said the Minister a few -days ago, "that reading, writing, and composition are poorly taught. It is a very grave statement to make regarding our national schools, but the facts have to be faced. There are exceptions, of course, but in the majority of our schools .these basic, essential subjects are not being taught as they should be, with the result that th& children are being turned out imperfectly equipped.for the everyday business of life." The charge is, as the Minister says, a grave one, but we Relieve that it is well founded. He'also •points out that the trouble does not •stop at the primary schools. From these schools the children pass on to the secondary and technical schools, and there they study new subjects with the original and fundamental defects uncorrected. "I have heard scholars in a New Zealand school," says Mr. Hanan, "reading' Latin a great deal better than they could read English." A Minister of Education who finds these things out for himself is obviously getting right down to bed-rock. Would it not be better, he asked, to keep children longer in the primary schools than, to turn them out thus imperfectly equipped? Better still wouid it be to improve the quality of the education provided in the primary schools, and we . take the appointment of Mr. John Caugliley as Assistant-Director of Education as a proof of the attention to be devoted to this important point. Mr. Caughiey is a man of great ability, courage, and initiative, and having worked his way up from the bottom of the ladder as a primary school teacher to the headmaetership of a District High School, : he'possesses a thorough familiarity "with every detail of the system that he will now assist in superintending.. He has at the same time a good standing independently as a citizen and a public man. We. shall miss Mr. Caughle/s valiant services in the arena if the clerical attack on the schools is ever renewed, but the same qualities | which have made him so formidable a ■controversialist -will be of immense value to the State in his new sphere. We heartily congratulate the Minister of Education upon the energy which he is displaying, and upon -an appointment which will greatly improve Ms chances of having his ideals carried out.