Manawatu Daily Times. School Accommodation

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6614, 19 May 1928, Page 8

Manawatu Daily Times. School Accommodation

Education is nothing if not progressive. It is meet, therefore, that we should from time to time pause and make critical survey of our educational position. Such stock-taking is valuable. It is a sure antidote to self-complacency. Wc note the milestones along the road of progress, for it is undoubtedly true that we have progressed. As a nation in the. making wc may justly point pride to our splendid educational institutions—institutions which have come into being within the life time of living men. Ihe slogan, “ Education free from the kindergarten to the university ” has almost been realised, and this in a country that has baicly achieved its eightieth birthday. But in our admiration of the general system we dare not blind ourselves to particular defects ('says the Dunedin “Star”), and that grave defects exist cannot be denied.

It is admitted that the primary school is the foundation of the whole education system. It is the branch of the system, too, for which the Government is primarily and entirely responsible. It has been wisely ordained that education be free, secular, and compulsory. The Government stands, therefore, educationally in loco parentis to the child—a grave responsibility. How does it, discharge that responsibility ? Every child has under a compulsory system an undeniable right to bo housed comfortably, warmly, and, so far as can be, aesthetically. The school receives these pupils at their most plastic and most impressionable age. They respond readily to environment. Let their environment, therefore, be of the best. Lot the class room reproduce something of the comforts of the home. That cannot be done where children are taught in buildings never intended for class room purposes. At the best it is but a compromise—and a very poor compromise. There should be no such compromise. The matter is too serious for it.

Educationally we are at the parting of the ways. Old methods arc passing. Mass instruction is yielding place to individual development. The pupil rather than the class becomes the unit. The bugbear of large classes is going. Let the Government rise to the occasion and give effect to this outstanding reform —remodel the schools where that is necessary; provide the requisite accommodation and equipment; and remove from an admittedly fine system the double reproach that pupils are still inadequately housed, and, in cases not a few, two classes taught in one room. The cost? Economise we can, and must, in other directions. But (he last place for economy should bo here.