EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 172, 22 June 1926, Page 6

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS.

In his comments upon our editorial dealing with the problems the country has to face on the educational question, the secretary of the New Zealand Educational Institute confirms the opinion we have long held that we are attempting too much in the way of educating a very considerable proportion of the boys and girls under instruction in our State primary and secondary schools. It should not be necessary to remind our readers that from mental incapacity or (possibly) unwillingness to continue studying the higher 1 branches of education, there are many thousands of growing children to-day who cannot, and will not, get beyond the sixth standard of our educational system. The figures quoted by Mr Parkinson concerning the number of young people between the ages of 14 and i 5 remaining at school last year are in themselves suggestive. He gives the number at 19,000, and states that “by law they might all have left at the fourteenth year, or on passing the sixth standard.” It would have been more to the point had he given the number that had actually passed the sixth standard and were simply awaiting transfer, to some secondary school —high or technical. We are quite in agreement with Mr Parkinson that education is a desirable thing, and that “the educated workman is the best workman,” providing that his education has given him that special knowledge he requires in the business upon which he enters. Mere book knowledge does not give him that. Theory, however good, is of little use without the practical knowledge that enables the workman to make use of it. It is in the sense that the practical must give place to the theoretical that, we consider the attempt is being made to over-educate many of the young people of to-day, and to fill their minds with false ideas of the business of life; because the attempt to so educate them leaves so jnany of their number with but a smattering of knowledge on subjects which are not likely to be of any practical service to them in after life, and which they fail to properly assimilate. However, our main object in drawing attention to the subject was to emphasise the belief hedd in many quarters, and even by some teachers, that the State is not getting a return from its educational system anything like equivalent to its expenditure upon it. In other words, that the money is not being expended to the best advantage, and that the increasing expenditure entailed by the system is getting beyond the means of the country. Since 1914 the expenditure per head of the population has gone up from 23s Id to 53s 7d, and, apart from loan moneys expended upon new buildings, etc., the actual expenditure from the public funds has increased from £1,301,000. to £3,642,000, while, like Oliver Twist of old, the cry is still for more. When Mr Parkinson speaks of New Zealand . “onty spending pne-eighth of its income on the upbringing of its family” he omits to say that fully twothirds of that income is obtained from taxation, and that any increase in the education vote can only be obtained by a corresponding increase in taxation, which, again, can only be imposed on the public with a more or less disastrous effect.