EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS

Evening Star, Issue 16778, 5 July 1918, Page 6

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS

At tho .monthly nicnting of the Street School Committee last Tieght the chairniHU (Alt D. Wiwhart) s;rid : Allo’.v me to point out in the iirsfc piace that the citizens of the Dominion who jiave children attending the Siato school* havo neither asK-c-d for the ;ibuliti<>n of school committees nor for the present intorioroare in scholastic affairs, nor is there a sentence in the published utterances of Mr dual to show us how the new proetxl’.m*. if a-.touted, is to produce a community of thinking people, or even a community of practical workers. To learn the work of a craftsman or a tanner, a boy must start when he is 14 or 15 years old. To leave it until he is older would bring him to an age when he is rrenorally unwilling to take orders or suggestions from an employer or foreman—aye. or even to obev his parents: in other words, the lad misses the bus. As a rule, in von tors are not. turned out of either school or university. The system at present in vogue, of allowing educational exports to consider themselves entitled to discover brains and reward merit, is not only humiliating, ir is absolutely fata! to true progress. In all the practical affairs of life, learned men -e-c notoriously bad haulers, with tne exception of a "microscopic minority. The proposal to open consolidated schools with •be ebanco of making them a success is a sheer impossibility cither in Central Otago or in the roadless north. Where the money is to come from to carry out the proposal of Mr Just is a matter that may be left for discussion at a public meting.