THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1924. PRIMARY AND JUNIOR SCHOOLS

Matamata Record, Volume VII, Issue 587, 4 December 1924, Page 4

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1924. PRIMARY AND JUNIOR SCHOOLS

SPEAKING informally at a meeting of the Matamata School Committee, the headmaster (Mr. H. Moore-Jones) expressed his misgivings as to the effect that the Junior High School system might have upon the teaching at the Primary School. Mr. MooreJones considered that there was a tendency to concentrate upon junior high schools and correspondingly neglect the interests of primary schools. He stated that if the providing of superior, more highly-paid teachers to the junior high school meant that low-paid, inferior teachers were going to be provided for the school "next the farm," then in the years to come the people would suffer, for the primary schooling was the foundation, and unless this foundation were well and truly laid, then the ultimate results would be poor.

• While agreeing with Mr. MooreJones that no subsequent attempt at educating boys and girls could compensate for tha lack of proper tuition and guidance during the more tender years, we are inclined to think that he is becoming needlessly alarmed. As he says, it does not necessarily follow that a system which has been found to be successful in America would be equally satisfactory in NewZealand; we would have joined issue with him, however, had he said that a system that worked well in Scotland would not prove adaptable to New Zealand conditions. This Dominion has reason to bo proud of and grateful for the cultural impetus given to us as a young nation by the Scottish settlers of Otago and Canterbury. We have no misgivings about anything educational that emanates from Scotland, where the system known here and in America as the Junior High School has been in vogue for the past half-century, or thereabouts:

From our own observation in many parts of New Zealand we should say

that the junior high school system is badly needed in order to give the younger children (below standards five and six) a reasonable chance of proper attention being paid to them. By way of illustration, we may state that on the same day that Mr. MooreJones made the speech referred to herein, we had visited an out-district school under the sole charge of a lady teacher who had no fewer than six standards and also four sections of the primer division to teach. This lady was very sensibly looking fopward with relief to the day when she would have the pupils of standards five and six taken oft' her hands; she felt that she would then be in a better position to give the younger ones the attention she would like to have been giving them all along. The case we quote is a fair illustration of the conditions that obtain in the country districts all over the Dominion to-day, and the junior high school will supply a need of the past halfcentury.

As for the suggestion that the schools "next the farm," may be staffed by inferior teachers, we do not share Mr. Moore-Jones' misgivings on that score either: the teacher who had not sufficient intellectual capacity to qualify for tlje teaching of pupils up to and including standard four would be an object of pity; a preliminary " intelligence test" should make fairly certain of no such* incompetents getting into the service. In any case—and on this point we think Mr. Moore-J ones will with us—personality and capacity for sympathy with and understanding of the children are far more important in a primary school teacher than are scholastic attainments. If the bond of sympathy and understanding (almost synonymous-terms) can not be established, then cold learning will fall far short of the attainable goal. Education, in the better sense, means the development of character and mental powers; that is, the unfolding of the child's attributes and aptitudes.

While Mr. Moore-Jones' motives do his hsart credit, we have no hesitation in placing on record, to await the test of time, our opinion that the Junior High School system will prove beneficial to the whole of the pupils of the present primary school. It would be a poor compliment indeed to the new system if the standard of teachers and teaching in the remaining primary classes were lowered, and thus a poorer lot of human material sent along to the Junior High School!