The Hawera Star. SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1927. CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 23 April 1927, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1927. CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS

Delivered every evening by 5 o'oioek in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa. Eltliam, Mangatobi, Kaponga. Alton, Hurley ville, Patea, Waverley. Mokoia, Whakamara, Ohangai, Meremere. Fraser Road and Ararata

Our educationists have been looking to the United States for some years in the hope of obtaining from that country ideas which will lead ultimately to the establishment, of the ideal education svstpm for New Zealand. Some of the suggestions brought, back from America have not made that instantaneous appeal to the parents of this Dominion which their sponsors have hoped for them, but there is one scheme, the consolidated school system, which, though at present still in the experimental stages in this country, seems destined to play an important part in the evolution of the State school education system in the rural districts of the Dominion. There will be much prejudice to be overcome before the rural community will give the consolidated system their whole-hearted support, for there has to be combated the suspicion that the removal of the one-teacher school from a district is going to depreciate the value of property in the eyes of prospective purchasers of farm land who have to .consider the educational needs of their families, but as the system grows the time will come when consolidation will be sought by the parents of country children, rather than be what it is at present, the subject of a. canvass by its advocates for support. Consolidation is, of course, as capable of being overdone as is vocational training or any of the other features of modern education, but if it is introduced slowly and by persons who know just where it will cease to be a benefit to a particular district, instead of by persons who are wedded to the idea of consolidation irrespective of local conditions, there will be nothing for the country parent to fear, but, on the contrary, much for him to hope for by the adoption and growth of the scheme. The old belief that a distance of a few miles from a soleteacher school will react to the disadvantage of those children who' have to depend upon a school bus to convey them to and from a fully-staffed school, will die out as the advantages to be gained by the pupils from attendance at the larger schools is manifested by the quicker and surer method which the children will enjoy, but there is, and will be, work for the school committees to do in watching that the system does not become unweildy or unnecessarily expensive to the people, either as individual parents or as a nation of tax-payers. That anomalies will creep in is certain if there is not some elasticity in the system, but that will not mean that the principle itself is fundamentally weak so much as that its administration is bad. Even now, under the small school system which, it may be presumed, some country people would part with very reluctantly, wo have the anomaly of some parents having forced upon them an “allowance” for horse shoeing which they do not-re-quire, because their children’s ponies are not shod, nor desire, because they are able and willing to stand Ihe burden of “expense,” where it is incurred, out. of their own pockets.