THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1908. UNIFORM SCHOOL BOOKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13866, 28 September 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1908. UNIFORM SCHOOL BOOKS.

It would have been regrettable had the Education Act Amendment Bill —which is generally a desirable measure— lost owing to a toodetermined persistence by the House in the uniform school books clause. But we may hope that the Government will accept the warning, and take some practical steps to remove the cause of almost universal complaint on the part of public school parents. It is naturally very hard to overturn a custom which has the sympathy and support of a pedantry that is the exceedingly pardonable weakness of the educational world, and is furthermore strengthened by considerable commercial interests, but the approval given by the Auckland Board of Education, upon the advice of its inspectors, to the uniform book system, shows that an intelligent perception of the situation is held by the more progressive bodies. At a period when it is recognised that everything possible should be done to lighten the burden of parentage, and to enable the industrious workers to obtain for their children the educational advantages which alone give opportunity in civilised society, it is amazing, to find casual whims and vague differences of opinion made

the grounds of a departmental extortion which may seem very little to the well-to-do, hue is felt very severely by the toiling mother, who has to feed, clothe, and book ,t houseful of children on the wages of a labouring man. Various statements are advanced to show how small the cost of school books is, but everybody knows that partisan statistics are always the most favourable, and' that the feeling throughout the country is overwhelmingly strong for reform. For of . " editions" there is no end. and of change there is no intermission all quite without justification or usefulness. If there were free books, as is suggested, we should very rapidly arrive at a uniform system, which does not mean that the country school would necessarily have the same books as'the.towu school. At present the cost of shifting and changing is thrust upon parents, without their consent and without consulting them, and the last thing apparently thought of is how the- money is to be found. Tf the State, supplied books there would be a departmental tendency to avoid needless expenditure, and certainly not to, squander . many thousands of pounds simply because some teachers got a little tired of certain books during the hot weather, and wanted to break the monotony, or because a firm of publishers had altered a few words and produced a new edition.

As a matter of fact, the training of teachers is of infinitely more importance than /the changing of books. The better the teacher the broader his outlook, the keener his faculty for inculcating knowledge,then the less he necessarily depends upon any particular book and the more he depends upon himself. It is an unfortunate thing that a passing passion for examination should have had the inevitable tendency to depreciate the human factor, and to exaggerate the value of printed sentences and collated facts, dates, and dogmas. Some book with a little more in it than another book, with a few more figures, a few more dates, a few more statements, with a few mistakes corrected, and a few new mistakes made to be corrected later, thus came to be reverentially regarded while the born teacher, who could make the dry plains of Learning bloom like a rose garden, and to whom any book was only a skeleton to be clothed in the flesh and blood of the spoken word, was too often scorned because he might not also have the power to cram his pupils with useless knowledge, which they hastened'to forget the moment examinations were over. It is not difficult to think what would have happened had it not been that among the school teachers were still to be found men who had the true teaching gift, while capable of absorbing and. emitting mere book knowledge, and that public men were still to be found who appreciated them. Had it not been for these men, who kept alive the light of Learning, and have already modified the practice and changed the conceptions of the educational world, we should be on the high road to a Chinese form, in which the mere memory would be the sole factor, and the printed book the sole horizon of the schoolboy. As matters stand, we are unquestionably regaining a healthier educational tone, and while retaining a recognition of the proper value of examinations and of the necessity for facts' and ; figures, we have again begun to realise that an intelligent grasp of any subject is worth more than the mere graving upon the memory of what a sixpenny text-book will rei member for us very much better. In this educational renaissance— it is nothing less, although it is too close for the world to perceive its great importance teacher is regaining his place. We want the best and the ablest men, the most sympathetic and cultured women, in the ranks of our educationalists, and the tendency plainly is to so increase the inducements of theprofession that it will be able to recruit in competition with other attractive callings. But the public does not want teachers who can teach from this book, not from that book, who are mere disciplinarians, watching the book do the work, and become bored when they know it too well and hear it • too often. Nobody could expect special public esteem and professional emolument for what would be only a form of caretaking, and extravagantly costly to parents at that.