CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10677, 11 June 1895, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

At a recent meeting of the Wellington Education Board several resolutions

TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

were passed which may mean very little or may mean a great deal. It was resolved that, in the opinion of the Board, technical instruction should be more largely given in State schools, and that the syllabus should ha revised and modernised. To carry out these resolutions a conference of all Education Boards was suggested. As regards the first of these proposals, opinions will probably vary much aa to how far it is poesibls or expedient to give technical instruction in primary schools. It is an open question aa to whether such instruction should taka the form of workshop practice or ba confined to lessons bearing on those subjects which are likely to ba useful to the artisan or the farmer. We are inclined to think that most people who have had aay practical experience of workshop life will consider that it would be little else than a waste of time and money to attempt much in the way of making practice in the use of tools a part of our primary school curriculum. We arc award that in saying this we run the risk of being called “oldfashioned,” “ unprogressive,” and so forth. We are not ignorant of the fact that the training of the eye and hand is considered by modern “ educationists ” —if that is the correct word—to be a necessary part of a child’s education, even if that training has to bo secured by the somewhat profitless exercise of making wooden spoons. But there are those who consider that in our primary schools this training of the eye and hand can be accomplished more successfully by the teaching of drawing than by any other method.

OBSTACLES AND POSSIBILITIES.

A workshop-training that would reach only a faw boys in each of our large schools would bo merely a farce.

while a system of workshop training that . would roach the majority of the pupils would ba all but impracticable, on account of the expense and loss of time. Primary education must of necessity ba comparatively inexpensive, and there are critics who consider our system already much too expensive. While we do not sympathise with these opponents of the system, wo do not think it would ba wise to give them another cause of complaint by spending public money on “Ads.” But while we havu little faith in the utility of teaching, or attempting to teach, tho use of tools to the many thousands of boys attending our primary schools, we believe that every opportunity cbould be given to lads who have chosen their calling in life to perfect themselves in their respective trades by means of evening technical schools aud classes, and public money certainly could not be better spent than in this way. There might aleo be ehablished “ schools of domestic instruction,” for the ben lilt of girls who have left the primary school, bub who wish to improve their knowledge of housoksepins, dreeamalaßg - and • • other

womanly occupations. Briefly, our contention is that technical schools should be established for purely technical education, but that technical education, pure and simple, is out of place in the primary school. There is no reason, however, why a great deal more should not be dona in our day schools than is done at present to cultivate in our youths a taste for the industrial arts. Much might be achieved, for instance, by giving greater facilities for the teaching of elementary science. This is a subject iu which most boys are readily interested, but which at present, we fear, receives little attention. This neglect is probably not to be attributed to indifference on the part of teachers so much as to sheer want of time, owing to the teaching of science being crowded out by the manifold demands of the " syllabus.”

LABOUR AND DIGNITY.

Much might be accomplished, however, by means of reading-lessons hearing on the principles of science as applied to farming, and

to the various handicrafts which flourish in our colonial towns. More time might be given, also, to teaching girls such subjects as sewing, domestic economy, the laws of health and the care of the sick. These subjects are at present included in the all-comprehensive syllabus, but wo fear that owiag to want of time they, like the elementary science lessons, enjoy but a feeble and attenuated existence. Such a practicable extension of “ technical ” teaching as we have attempted to indicate would, we believe, meet with approval and success. But any attempt to introduce an expensive and useless system of workshop training into the day-school would probably result in failure and in discredit to our primary school system. One of the oddest of the arguments that have been made use of in favour of such an attempt is that by it labour would fao dignified and ennobled. We have little patience with those' people who think so unworthily of “hand-workers” that they imagine it necessary for , the cause of labour to he bolstered up with arguments of this sort. They may rest , assured that labour was both noble and dignified before they were born, and will be noble and dignified after they are dead. If in the past those who labour with their hands have, through inferior education among other causes, been underestimated by others, that is all the more reason why lads who are to earn their living by a handicraft should receive as thorough a scholastic training as time will permit before entering on their apprenticeship.