SCHOOL AGES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 31 July 1924, Page 7

SCHOOL AGES

fo the Vditor.)

Sir It is difficult to deal otherwise than’ scathingly with Mr Smith's re marks at the Education Board meeting on Monday. In the long tissue of misstatements' and false inferences, almost every sentence could be torn to shreds, did space and patience permit. It must suffice to take merely a few salient examples. At a later date I .should like to deal in a rum-controversial way with some of the important issues that have been raised in this discussion. With regard to Mr Smith’s original state merit that "Nelson children were om year to 18 months behind those of othei places, he now says that he was not referring to the average ages. In the first, place, what else in the name of common sense could such a statement refer to unless it referred to average ages’/ And in the second place, when Ids statement was challenged, what figures did Mr Smith bring forward in a vain attempt to substantiate his statement? lie gave us a huge table of average ages and nothing but average ages. Vet now be coolly tells us that lie was not, referring to average ages at all. Such wriggling is contemptible. He again reiterates that, there has bean undue retardation in the Town Schools, though I have produced official figures to show that there has been nothing of the kind. But even in making this false charge he cannot be consistent, for in one place ho says that he was specially referring to the junior classes and in another place he says he meant the upper end of the school. Vet the average cage of Startdnrd VI. was identical with that for the whole Dominion! Does Mr Smith really know .vlint he does mean?. Mr Smith now scans to place chief emphasis on the presence in the upper classes of hoys of high age. In the first place why does lie not in common fairness mention also the boys of low age, (he bovs for example of 12, 11 and even Hf years of age who gained their Proficiency certificates? Again what if these older and duller boys had been induced to leave school as soon as they had turned 14, as is the practice in some schools, would their absence from the school be a proof of greater efficiency? Even a layman can see that the fact that dull boys are glad to stay on and learn what they can is distinctly to the credit of a school. But this connection Mr Smith states were so many 12 or 18 months behind that it was commented on by every inspector and by the Minister of Education/’ In reply to this I have to state that in all the thirty years that I was headmaster, not one solitary inspector made any such comment about the Boys’ Central School. But what will all practical teachers and inspectors think of Mr Smith’s extraordinary dictum that every boy should pass the sixth standard by the time he was fourteen years of age? No one with, the least grip of educational matters could put forward such a ludicrous theory. 110 might as well say that every farm on the Waimcas should produce, say, 60 bushels to. the acre. Does ho imagine that all children are of equal intelligence? Has ho read the evidence in your paper given before the Mental Defectives Commission? I have known whole families in which none of tbo children could reach the fourth standard no matter how long they stayed at school. One poor child remained till the age of 17 and then had not even reached the first, standard. A tragedy indeed, as the readers of “The Revolt Against Civilisation” will recognise, but not ir the sense that Mr Smith meant. It is enough to say that according to the last EL report, there were no fewei than 15,314 children in our public schools who had not satisfied the ridiculous requirements of Mr Smith. But there is no need to labour the point further. The situation was delightfully summed up by Mr Smith’s ardent supporter, Mr Mclntyre, when in an attempt to excuse one of Mr Smith’s many misstatements, lie unkindly characterised it as "a figure of speech.” Exactly so i Not facts, but figures of speech form the sum and substance of Mr Smith’s remarks.