DEMOCRATIC STATE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 10 May 1939, Page 3

DEMOCRATIC STATE

PERPETUATION THROUGH THE SCHOOL ! THE ONLY WAY SECONDARY SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS (t' mte<l I‘rofes Association I WELLINGTON, This Day. The declaration that the democratic State could only perpetuate itself through the school in its widest sense that would best ensure that all made their due contribution a sefficient members of a democratic community, was made by the president of the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Association. Mr J. Hutton, of the Gisborne High School, in his presidential address at the opening of the annual conference of the association in Wellington yesterday. The schaol, therefore, must be the very special care of the democratic State, he added. “As a nation we have always emphasised the importance of the individual; the educationel corollary has been emphasis on individual selfrealisation.” Mr Hutton said. “Popular discussions have tended sometimes to emphasise the rights of individuals and overlook the corresponding duties. Too great an emphasis on individualism may not be conductive to social service. “We have seen instruction supported and carried on by the State used to bolster up an aggressive nationalism and used to fit the individual to serve the purpose of a State aiming at suen ends. We have heard of youth raised to a pitch of mystic exaltation in its worship of the race or the leader. This is to dispose education, to direct it tc temporary purposes as a new regime has so often done in the past. FREE WILL OF MAJORITY Government m democratic lands must itself be the expression of the will of the majority freely expressed. That stability ana progress snail u~ asured under popular government, however, education must permeate the masses of the people, and the aim must be to develop in those masses civilised personalities. “In our worship of individual freedom and our abhorrence of the deification of the State we have sometimes

shrunk from any attempt at the indoctrination of youth. The future citl- i zen, however, must be fitted for the ' great task of maintaining the principles of democracy. He must be well informed, capable of criticising and . assessing performance. thinking for himself, but possessed of a strong sense of duty. He must know that an ignorant or a slack democracy is destined to perish, and that it is his duty to assist in securing the efficient working and the continued existence of that way of life that he has received from , his forebears “If indoctrination is needed to ensure the continued existence of universal standards of morality, of truth and justice, then indoctrination we must have. The call comes to the young citizen on a higher plane of intelligence than the call to support a leader or ensure the dominance of a race—it calls on him to maintain the highest principles ot liberty and of civilisation. Indoctrination in truth is quite inevitable. Let us beware lest the fear of it be merely an insistence upon individual rights without sufficient emphasis upon corresponding duties ■U'PR EM ELY IMPORTANT I All Hutton said that obviously the post-primary schools and the guidance agencies that concerned the adolescent were supremely important in a democratic State. The State, therefore, must see that the schools were increasingly well served in two definite ways. First, the State should provide such surroundings in all schools that the young citizen became acquainted with literature, with art. with craft, with the drama, with music, with man’s activity in science and industry in a school enviroment which was itself inspiring and linked with community life, beside giving ample opportunity for social training. That involved the provision of much more than the traditional classrooms. laboratories and school hall. It involved a setting that would touch the soul of the pupil unto fine issues. Secondly, the State should provide professional services for the schol adequate for the aims envisaged. He believed that to-day they had a most promising body of young teachers in the postprimary schools which itse f was a good augury for the future. It is important that the State should take steps to ensure that the teaching body in the post-primary schools was a truly professional body which in comprehensiveness of training and in status was second to no other profesSCHOOL ENLARGING ITS SCOPE "The school Is enlarging its scope and its importance.” Mr Hutton said. “Since it is the school (in its widest sense including all those educational and guidance agencies that affect the youth of our land) that will best ensure that all make their due contribution as efficient members of a democratic community. the democratic State can only perpetuate, itself through the school The school must therefore be its very special care.” Mr Huton said any attempt to impose a single type secondary school upon New Zealand would be inimical to progress. The schools, he thought, had learnt to respect each other and to recognise a real unity of purpose in *he diversity of retaining. It was important both that the best intellect should be appropriately trained and that the great mass of the community who did not go to the university should also be truly educated. Knowledge, therefore, was not the only good at which teachers aimed though knowledge was an important source of education. What really mattered was what remained to the average pupil after school days had lons passed—abiding interests, good taste . p sense of values, a capacity for per • sonal effort, independence of judgment vocational adjustments, community ad justment and the like.