PLEA FOR EDUCATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 135, 8 May 1928, Page 6

PLEA FOR EDUCATION

ADDRESS TO TEACHERS. * PRESENT SYSTEAI CONDEAINED. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, May 7 “Education has not been on the political map for many years. It is impossible to get lor it a page of legislation though days are given to stonewalls over jockeys and racing permits, though weeks are absorbed in looking after our wool, meat and butter. AA 001, meat and butter are all of great consequence in a pastoral country, but 1 do'not put education second to them. If it is to assume its rank as a national and, therefore, an electoral issue,' it behoves everybody who has children or likes children to become active. Education is not on the political map. Surely it is justifiable and right to urge the public and, above all, the parental public to put it there.” These views were expressed by Air F. L. Combs, ALA., in his presidential address at the annual meeting to-night of the N«hv Zealand Educational Institute. “A visitor from another planet to any city in this Dominion to-day,” said j Air Combs, “would bo. convinced that j insurance, banking, licensed victualling, motion pictures and soft goods were not held in light esteem. . . e would see them on all sides housed in buildings spacious, ornate and pretentious. He would find them on the most valuable sites. He would reason, I think irrefutably, that their activities were matters of prime concern. AYliat of our schools? After he had .seen the old "Wellington College, Thorndon Normal, Newtown, le Aro, Brooklyn and Petone Central, what would lie think of the standing of education ? Would he believe that in such mean and cramped surroundings was being performed the most vital function of society ? . He would find these other business institutions three at a time competing for the work that could be adequately performed by one. He would infer, and truly, inter, that they were absorbing twice the man-power really required to perform their functions. Entering.the school, he-would find that not a third of what the hour brought forth in the way of needs and opportunities was being coped with or catered for. “I should stand self-condemned it, without fear or favour, I did not indict a blot on . our system, our compulsory system, which, in my opinion is blighting our civilisation, a civilisation that may feel complacent if it increases production 10 per ceno, but will infallibly clash to ruin if it *ails to fashion fully developed wills and independent characters. ouch finis and characters will never be produced while in the name of economy we sti.nt teaching power, leave one overstrained individual to essay the work of two and persist in the discredited technique and methods of mass instruction. . , the child, going to school find that his individual problems are given full attention, discernment and sympathy, that he is progressing along individual lines to mental and moral stature he never dreamed of, that every dav makes a conscious addition to his powers and interests, that every 9 0ll_ tact awakens and ministers affections that elevate and refine, and .he will discover a joy in self-realisation and achievement that will make relaxations insipid and distractions an intrusion. “Let parents but witness this phenomenon of individual self-development to its optimum and they too will not concede to, hut assert for the school that central and supreme place among our institutions which it. ought always to have held, which it is not to our own credit that it should so long have been refused.”