MORE EDUCATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 16060, 15 October 1912, Page 6

MORE EDUCATION.

Tax addrers that Mr W. H. Howell delivered last evening on tho subject of technical education deserves a very wide audience. The Technical College, under Mr Howell's direction, has done a work of enormous value during recent years and it has been supported by the School of Art and other institutions concerned with various branches of manual and technical instruction. But thousands of children aro still being permitted to face life with no better equipment than is supplied by tho primary schools, which admittedly impart only the groundwork of a real education. Mr Howell wants to see a course of technical instruction mado compulsory upon all children and in putting forward this demand he is pointing to a condition of affairs that is deplored by every thoughtful person. New Zealand ought not to be sending any of its young people to the ranks of casual labour. It should bo teaching every boy and every girl a trad?, and the best results would bo secured if the boy was taught to bo a skilled tiller of the soil and the girl to bo a housewife in the broadest sense of the word. But as a matter of fact technical instruction is not being secured by one-half or even by onequarter of the children. Boys and girls are drifting into blind alley employments and reaching adult years without knowledge of a trade while industries are languishing for lack of skilled workers. Tho situation would not bo allowed to continue for another year if public opinion on, tho subject was properly developed and wo are glad to find Mr Howell making lis appeal for reform in vigorous language.