LIFE’S BROAD HIGHWAY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 16 April 1926, Page 5

LIFE’S BROAD HIGHWAY.

PURPOSE OF EDUCATION

CHANCE FOR- EVERY CHILD. LONDON, April G. The president of tlm. Congress <f the National Union of Teachers, Mr F. Barraclough, jn an address, said that education must be made a broad highway. When poverty barred ai scholar’s path adequate maintenance, grants should he given, not as charity, but- in recognition of th e , most profitable form of national development. Dullards and sluggards, even if sons of wealthy parents, .should not be tolerated in the higher schools, said Mr Barraclough. The nation was .able to par £615 a year for the training of a. Royal Air Force cadet, and it should not begrudge spending £ll on each of of the primary school children. The former contemptuous indifference towards educationists, characteristic of the British mentality during the period of industrial supremacy, was now rapidly disappearing, Mr Barraclough. continued. England’s industrial needs demanded a renaissance of education.

Al 1 politicians recognised the necessity of “educating our masters,” added the speaker. An uneducated piole tar Lilt might develop into the intolerable tvranny of mob rule, engulfing the very structure of civilisation. The first great reform should be the reduction of the size of classes, 30 scholars being the maximum.