THEN AND NOW.

Northern Advocate, 9 February 1925, Page 6

THEN AND NOW.

INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS. At the conference of inspectors of schools in Wellington last week, the Minister of Education (Sir James Parr) paid a tribute to the quality of the old-time, school inspector. "It is no use coming down here to be a mutual admiration society," said Sir James Parr, after stating that he would attend the conference during tho afternoon to discuss with the delegates the teaching of such subjects as arithmetic, history, music, agricultural science, and the efficiency or otherwise of present methods. "Tho conference must get down to bedrock, with a view of improving even upon the excellent results which it is admitted the primary school system of New Zealand is producing. If one looks back to the older systems one must admit that there was a, good deal of merit in them. "In Auckland nearly half a century ago none of the inspectors had the benefit of any university training, most of them could not do more than scrape up a D certificate, but still one must pay a tribute to the undoubted worth of the work of the, old inspector. He was a man without much culture and he had to put each pupil through that individual examination which was then considered the beginning and the end of that department of education, but that old inspector got results of which the country today need not be ashamed. . . . Now we are in a garden of the utmost latitude, but teachers and inspectors must not forget that the old days of rigidity had some merit, that one must not get too for away from the old in the endeavour to grasp the new. There was a thoroughness about the old inspector that there is no denying; he wanted accuracy, no slipshod work was passed by him. He required mechanical accuracy and was a stickler for discipline.

"The visit of the old inspector was a time of absolute torture to the chil dren, and with the teacher it was a time of grave anxiety; today that is all gone. The teacher, I understand, welcomes the visit as a sort of renewal of a happy acquantance, and the children almost shout with joy. (Smiles among the delegates.) But that simply emphasises that in our efforts to capture the new we must not forget that there were qualities about the old system of which we must not lr>se sight.''