PROGRESS IN EDUCATION

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10729, 29 October 1928, Page 4

PROGRESS IN EDUCATION

(To tho Editor.) Sir, —I have been directed by the Executive of the New Zealand Educational Institute to ask your assistance in drawing the attention of the public to the importance of the present juncture in its bearings upon ihe progress of education in this Dominion. The immediate occasion of this letter is the reference to the subject in the election manifesto issued by the Prime Minister. The Executive regards the paragraph devoted to education as regrettably meagre and discouraging. In almost every other country in the world the present time is witnessing great_ forward steps in tho development of national powers through the education of the young; and it has been officially announced in the Education Gazette that a reorganisation of tho education system is intended in tho immediate future : yet no indication is given in the manifesto as to what direction such reorganisation is to take. Certain aspects of education call for especial attention at this time of reconstruction. Not all of them can be dealt with in the scope of a! single letter. Some of them, however, are so messing as to compel attention. Perhaps the most important of them all is the further’ pursuit of the policy of smaller classes. Much has already been done, but real education, the development of individuality and the evoking of possibilities of will and skill cannot ho effectively carried on with classes of the present numbers. Too much economy in this direction is the worst kind of material waste. Of equal, if not greater, importance is ihe raising of tho school age. Nearly every other country is doing it, and provision for it has been embodied in our own Education Act for many years. It only needs an Order in Council to bring this long-needed reform into operation. Until it is done, education cannot be carried to (lie paving point. Many, if not most, of those young people who leave school at or before the fourteenth year, are deprived of instruction anil of the formative influences of school just, at the time when these aro most needed and most likely to ho fruitful in permanent, results. No re-organisation of tho education system can lx? satisfactory that does not provide for tho co-ordination of the several isections of educational effort into a single system tinder a single local control. The system of watertight compartments—primary, secondary, technical—is out of date. Education is a life-process, single and continuous, but various according to the nature of tho individual. A unified control admitting of variety of courses—that is the modern ideal; hut it can never bo attained while, schools and pupils aro divided up into different sections each under its own Board, ploughing its own little furrow in blissful disregard of what is being done in the next field. Such a system, to give its best, or even to givo_ good, results, must be locally administered. Contrary to what has often been said, there is a great, and growing, interest in. and demand for education among the people of New Zealand. Tho proof is to lx? found in the increasing numbers enrolled in the University, tho High Schools, the Technical Schools and tho District High Schools. But there is no indication that tills public interest is to be availed of in the reorganisation that has boon foreshadowed— rather the reverse. Tho most effective educational administration can bo secured only by utilising local enthusiasm, local knowledge, local brains, and local pride. An education system cannot be administered efficiently or educationally by the issue of Orders in Council and Regulations and Circulars from a central office table. Such a machine may work, but it will he a system of instruction, not of education. Education is of the life, and makes its appeal to tho life, of the people, and can only produce its full fruitage when ft is rooted in the homes and minds and feelings of tho people. One other point must suffice, Tho country child is not getting a fair chance under the present arrangement. School buildings and equipment, though improving, aro in too many oases sadly deficient; the system of payment induces the best teachers to leave the country schools; the country District High Schools, the real glory of the present system, are outside the reach of many promising young people, while money is still being wasted on scholarships for town children who aro otherwise provided for.

Other points calls for public attention, but for the present, enough has been said to show the importance of the issues involved in such a weighty subject as educational organisation. —1 mri, vours etc., H. A. PARKINSON, Secretary, N.Z.E.I.