COUNTRY CHILDREN

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 227, 8 September 1936, Page 9

COUNTRY CHILDREN

Education Will Not Be Neglected CONSOLIDATION NEED By Telegraph—Press Association. WELLINGTON, Sept. 7. Au assurance that, so far as it lay’ in his power, no child would suffer educationally because he lived in a relatively sparsely-populated area is given by the Minister of Education, the Hon. P. Fraser, in a letter received by the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. The Minister’s communication was in reply to a remit passed by tlie recent Dominion conference of the union, which urged that country children should be given educational facilities .more nearly equal to those enjoyed by town children in order to remove one of the chief disabilities of farm life.

“I am convinced that one of the most effective means of securing a stable and contented rural population is in providing a system of education which, while in no way inferior to that enjoyed by the towns, will take special cognisance of conditions peculiar to country life,” said Mr Fraser. “T wish to say that I am quite of one mind with your union in feeling that it is only by consolidating small schools which local conditions made necessary half a century or more ago that preliminary steps in improving rural education can be made. Your general recommendation that a full sur vey of country education should be undertaken is a matter receiving my attention ”

In replying to a further remit pass ad by the union and advocating the institution of a system <rf voluntary adult education similar to that afford ed in Danish folk schools, the Ministel said it was pertinent to ask whethe* we had corresponding climatic condi tions and also whether our social life, with its facilities for indulging io sport Or watching others at play and its evening entertainments, would no’ be a serious obstacle to the successful establishment and maintenance of such schools.

Mr Fraser said that the whole question of adult education in both town and country districts in New Zealand was at present being considered by a committee set up by the Senate of the U niversity.