CO-ORDINATION OF NEEDS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 16, 16 December 1937, Page 8

CO-ORDINATION OF NEEDS.

INDUSTRY AND EDUCATION

FINDING MIDDLE COURSE

“We must see that the basis of a cultural education is given all children, whatever their subsequent sphere of life,” stated the chairman of the Board of Governors (Mr M. H. Gram), at the annual breaking-up ceremony of the Palmerston North Technical School last evening, when he said they might pause to consider what was the place of such a school. Industrialists, he said, sought to obtain employees early for specialised training, while the schools sought to retain them in order to give them the elements of a cultural education. It was possible that the real solution to the problem lay between, and, with gooawill on both sides, there was no reason why the, needs of industry should not be co-ordinated with the objectives of education.

Commenting that he was putting forward his views not in an official capacity by virtue of his Government position, but because they represented his opinions as a student of education, the principal speaker at the function, Dr. A. G. Butchers, head of the Government correspondence schools, stated that since technical schools had been first introduced in New Zealand there had been a definite liberalisation of studies. The late Sir Robert Stout had moved in vain, towards the end or last century, to have technical subjects included in the curriculum of secondary schools, and early in the present century Mr George Hogben had done likewise, but, determined not to be baulked after being frustrated in this direction, he had reluctantly started io establish technical schools throughout the country. It was pleasing to note that there had been a mutual recognition ot respective points of view and that secondary schools did l.ot now undervalue technical subjects or technical schools under value cultural education, with the result that botn Had become complementary institutions. Since the governing body at this centre bad been instituted in 1904, sum Dr Butchers, Palmerston North had been fortunate in having its post-pri-mary education under the one united control. Schools were not static. They were dynamic ; constantly changing, infusing new ideas, and expanding in may directions. Extra-mural education had become intra-mural and accessory activities had become integral ones in school life.