TOO LONG A CINDERELLA

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 38, 13 February 1918, Page 6

TOO LONG A CINDERELLA

It would be difficult to conceive of a better case than that presented by the representative deputation • wMch met Cabinet Ministers yesterday with, regard to the provision of a new site for the Wellington Technical College. The speakers showed how the College had struggled year after year with makeshift accommodation and an unsuitable site, yet making" progress. With wonderful patience the claims of the institution have been pressed time and again; and always with the same result. Now the need for action is greater than ever. Never has there been a time when public .co-operation in suoh an efficiency-produc-ing movement as technical education would be more certain; never has the need for auch a movement been more pronounced. The scattered warehouse flats and hired buildings whicTi help to make up the " College " are as congested as formerly, and when the institution should be in a position to offer wider facilities for technical training it requires all the effort of the directors to prevent the present facilities from becoming more restricted. Reading the report of. the arguments submitted by the deputation, one would have expected at least some definite indication of action in the Ministerial replies;, but what did those replies amount to? —sympathy, ample sympathy, but nothing more. The Technical College and all connected with it have been surfeited . with sympathy, and what is wanted now is something more material, something with land and bricks and mortar in its composition; less o£ promise and more of performance. The deputation named .a definite site, four acres at the southern end of Mount Cook, and, as full consideration has evidently been given to the possible uses of this area, we are unable to see why the request should not be granted. Certainly education, and particularly technical education, has the strongest of claims for a desirable location. We know of no object with a better title to consideration.

We have said that the deputation received sympathy and the promise of consideration—nothing more; indeed, there was rather less, for the Ministerial replies appeared to emphasise unduly the financial difficulties. We have always urged economy, botb public and private, in war-time; but this claim for aid for technical education is no new claim. Governments have had it before them in days of peace, and have found exouses for delay, with ijhe usual expressions of good-will. Moreover, this is. a work which cannot wait. Every year lost means that more boys and girls are leaving the schools—losing the most valuable educational period of their lives, and if the College is not ready and well-equip-ped when the war ends it will mean that the hest opportunity for extending the system of technical training has been allowed to pass. The danger of a reversion to pre-war indifference will then face the community. Probably all this is •realised, but is it realised in its practical bearing upon the question? When a Labour deputation last week placed before the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education a scheme for an amended apprenticeship law the Ministers were definite in their promises- of support. In that scheme technical training was a prime essential, and if the proposals are adopted,/even in part, the effect will be an inoreased tax upon the Technical College. How do the Ministers expect .such a. demand to be met under present circumstances? And is it not foolish to consider the education of more boys under a compulsory system, when there is little more than standing-room for the numbers who now^seek such training voluntarily?