ECONOMY IN EDUCATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 6 August 1931, Page 5

ECONOMY IN EDUCATION

UNIFICATION NECESSARY It could not bo expected that the Education Vote would be exempt from keen scrutiny in these times of economic stress, and the announcement that a committee will be set up shortly to investigate expenditure in this branch of State activity occasions no surprise (comments the Christchurch “Times”). To those who realise what an absolute essential contribution to the national life has been yielded by the educational system of New Zealand, there is some consolation that educationists arc to find a place on the committee. There would be reason for grave alarm were the investigations to be made wholly in terms of finance and recommendations made by ruthless apostles of economy at all costs. To offer the system a show of violence by merely proposing an arbitrary reduction of the amount voted would meet with serious public opposition. Any economies suggested by the committee will have to be backed up by evidence showing that they can be effected without impairing the system, even as it exists at the present Lime. Political philosophy has never wavered in its insistence that a democracy must be educated, and as a democracy is a nation undergoing self-creation, growth and development must be its law of life. This can never be effected by a limitation of educational advantages, and no recommendations of the proposed committee can expect public support if they deny diversity of opportunity and enlargement of life to the children from every section of the community. But while the value of education to the nation is clear, it must also be admitted that it works within the limits set by a material scaffolding of policy, administrative organisation, and, of greatest importance just now, finance. It is with that scaffolding'that the committee will be concerned. The education system, unfortunately for its unity, has grown by accretions and these have never been welded into a whole. The result has been sub-systems, each independent and with serious overlappings. Less than any other human activity can education be handled effectively and economically if it is handled in sections, and it is here, as well as in the increasing cost of post-primary education, that the economy committee will be called upon to make the closest scrutiny.