Manawatu Daily Times Practical Education

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6911, 17 May 1929, Page 6

Manawatu Daily Times Practical Education

JN the course of his address to the members of the Technical Teachers’ Conference, Hon. H. Atmore made it quite plain to his audience that ho had no intention to be swayed merely by age-old traditions or by professional prejudices. “While four million pounds a year,” he said, “are being spent on education—a large sum, but not too large if the public is getting value for the money—l do not think it is getting that value. No member of a very alert Cabinet has been more active than the Minister of Education has been in making himself acquainted with the details of his department Frequently more frank than discreet in his utterances, he opened his address by letting his audience know that he was not impressed by the multiplication of such institutions as it represented. He did not see the need for so many educational organisations and stressed the value of unification. Education should be a continuous process, lie maintained, and numerous organisations did not help in the national outlook. About Mi - . Atmore's thoroughness and courage there cau be no doubt. Without casting any aspersions upon his predecessors in office the new Minister indicated to his audience many reforms he thought were needed in tire education system of the Dominion. Modern conditions of life, he reminded the assembled teachers were in a state of flux, and no man in the world should lay down an education policy for a term of years. While technical education had advanced in popular estimation in the Dominion there had not been the changes and the progress in the educational system the people had a right to expect and demand. The fact that there had jicen so little change in the system since 1877 was in itself an indictment of the education policy. Mr. Atmore aspires to placing the New Zealand system in the forefront of the education systems of the world, and towards this end would make material changes in both its! character and its application. Developments in these directions are being awaited with much interest.