WHO IS TO PAY?

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8542, 24 March 1908, Page 7

WHO IS TO PAY?

THE SCHOOL BOOK SYSTEM

PARENT OR STATE? Per Press Association AUCKLAND, March 22. The Auckland Headmasters' Association has received a resolution affirming that in order that education should be free in reality as well as in name it is necessary for the State to provide all books and materials used in public schools free of cost to the parents. Reckoning the number of children in average attendance at 120,000, it is estimated by the association that they could be supplied with three readers each (a general library reader, a geographical, and a historical, reader), at an approximate cost of Is per reader, i.e., at a cost of £18,000, allowing £7000 for the provision of exercise books, etc. The total initial cost would be, say, £2-5,000. After the initial cost a sum of about £10,000 a year should, it was considered, keep the scheme in full working order and be sufficient to allow for depreciation of readers and their replacement when necessary by new ones. The association also passed a resolution that it was inadvisable to have the same set of reading books in use throughout the Dominion. The reasons given for this were that children required different reading matter according to their circumstances and environment, and that what suited any particular locality could be best settled by the schoolmaster concerned. It was considered that the poorer class schools should have an easier type of reader than that in use in better class neighbourhoods. To aim at dull uniformity was foreign to English ideals, and was unhesitatingly condemned by every educational authority of note.

It was agreed that a list of books suited for school use should be drawn up by a committee cbnsisting of professors in English, inspectors, headmasters and class teachers. This list should be revised every three years, and from it individual headmasters should make their own selection.