Minister and People

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6844, 23 February 1929, Page 8

Minister and People

HON. 1L ATMORE, the new Minister of Education, takes a broader view of the uses of education than does the average man in the street. In addressing the members of the Wellington Education Board at their meeting on Wednesday he impressed upon them that closely akin to the question of education was that of land settlement. The unemployment in the Dominion to-day. he said, was almost entirely due to the fact, that theie was an academic bias in the system of education, and he was going to do his best to alter that. Unemployment was purely a matter of plain cause and effect and nothing else. The academic bias of our education system had put into the minds of boys and girls that they must be clerks or something like that, and by their drift to the towns the economic structure was becoming top-heavy. None of Mr. Atmorc’s recent predecessors in the direction of the Education Department has taken this broad view of the uses of school training and it is to be hoped the teaching profession and Parliament will pay some heed to the Minister’s suggestions.

The secondary industries, Mr. Atmore went oil to say, could be stimulated only by increasing the purchasing power derived from the primary industries. There would be no cure for unemployment until that fact was frankly faced. The building of roads and other relief works were mere palliatives. Education must have a wide agricultural basis. The present methods were simply combing the bright boys out of the country into the town to further aggravate the competition there. Turning to another subject with refreshing candour Mr. Atmore maintained that in all question of policy a decision should be reached by the Minister, as the representative of the people. In this, he explained, he meant no reflection whatever on the officers of his Department A Minister was not an expert and he should not be. An expert in an executive position -was a danger to the community. Experts were paid to advise Ministers who were the representatives of the people and should decide all questions of policy. The new Minister of Education, as his friends expected, obviously is going to be master in his own domain.