EDUCATION NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15500, 6 January 1914, Page 4

EDUCATION NOTES.

BY MENTOJI.v common with many others, " Mentor" availed himself of the general invitat'ort to all interested in educational affairs to attend the opening of the annual meeting of the New Zealand Educational Institiute, at present being held in our local Training College. The meeting is attended by nearly sixty delegates, representing between them every district in the Dominion, and it is presided over by Mr. T. U. Wells, of Auckland, who is the outgoing president. The institute numbers nearly three thousand members, or nearly 90 per cent, of the qualified teachers employed in the primary schools of the Dominion; it has been largely instrumental in securing such necessary reforms as a Dominion system of salaries for teachers, the passing of the Tochers' Court of Appeal Act, which gives security of tenure, and the Superannuation Act. The institute has assisted too in securing modifications of the syllabus from time to time, and i.? obtaining for teachers the liberty t;- classify their own pupils. It has a l»gil ieience fund of £1000, which is available to sustain the rights of any member who is wrongly used, and it is only through the institute that ail appeal can be taken before the Court.

Naturally enough these "annual conferences, or teachers' parliaments, are looked upon as exceedingly important affairs by teachers, for they afford opportunities of meeting together and for interchange of views on matters relating to the schools and the training of the you.g. Indeed, it may be said that the real function of ;;a&feren r.ic.'i as th*t now Leing held is the education of l ie educators of thecfrldd' ex.. The order paper on this partictt.-J occasion is a very lengthy one consisting ' ' over sixty emits. These deal with *'-.o or.institution <;£ the institute, with, sagimpro\ements in the Education Ac'., with ralaries aid superannuation, with the syllabus and school work, with sanitation and health, and with general topics. However, as a number of th© remits are practically .identical, the order paper will not prove quite as formidable as at first sight it appears.

Apart from the speeches of welcome, the principal feature of yesterday morning's session was the presidential address. Mr. Wells lock as his subject a very big question—the relation of education to the solution of the social problems that confront modern society. Naturally in the limited time at his disposal he was obliged to treat the subject in very brief fashion, but he dealt with it on broad general lines, touching in turn on the influence of heredity, cf environments and of education, on the pressing problems of crime and destitution.

There can be no doubt that this is the age of the social question. At no previous time have the needs and problems of society been more keenly felt or more earnestly faced. In dealing with our s-scial problems two objects have always to be kept in view. One is the improvement of the economic conditions of the people, the other, no less important, is the improvement of personal and, as the president pointed out in his address, education-can assist in the attainment of both these objects, and hence it is now recognised as one of the chief weapons of the social reformer. It takes us a long time to realise that the child is the very centre of the social question and our strong hope of its ultimata solution. In our work for social regeneration we hare devoted far too much attention to he adult, far too little to the child. The words of an old writer—Cato, if I mistake contain much wisdom. " Barren land should not be cultivated, nor even once ploughed."

Let ns honestly face the fact that we cannot do much to modify the lives and characters of the adults of the community who have gone astray, but we can do much to bring' physical, mental, and moral health into the lives of the children, an! to jive scope to their infinite potentialities for the good of the nation. The whole gamut of human capacity is represented in the children of this land, and lying latent within them is the collective power which, properly developed, should make New Zealand the happiest and m -t prosperous of nations. It is surely wisdom, therefore, to concentrate our efforts more upon the training and" education of the child than upon other forms of social endeavour. Education, in its broadest sense, the sense of comprising all the forces that help to form the minds of the young, is now recognised as one of the most potent agents in dealing with the serious social problems that confront modern society.

No doubt the president » U correct in* his statement that the evils that afflict modern society are largely *» to defer defectiTe < n *™«nt, and defective education; bEi it *" impossible to venture on any .comparison of the influences respectively exerted by these factors. Cnme is no doubt due tesS quite as truly as to physical heredity The about 8o per cent, of the children of Paupers and criminals who are placet fa StoLiFw* m wl ? a *« ***«» good citizens. We are, no doubt, part of the good as well as part of the bad* we meettie unclean environment will seldom produce the clean thing. Evil companionship corrupt good manners, and good"com! panmnships sname Hi-manners. ThelawTdf environment hold, independent of the moral quality. 6

The president concluded his address by advocating a number of reform in oiueducational system which he urged would tend to develop better and more useful eta, and would thus assist m soS the social problems referred to in the earlier portion of his address. No doubt kindergarten departments, adequate idav! mg spaces, open-air teaching, continuation schools and the other suggestions made wouldl all prove of valuable assistance in 2f.,lJiu our. schools, and would enable them to play a more effective part in securing social progress. The suggested improvements mean increased expeaditure on education; but education of the proper kind is the accepted antidote against unemployment and pauperism, and the increased, expenditure should, as the president pointed out, prove an excellent investment for the nation. We are likely m "•,.»■ Mure to hear more about the necessity of vocational education By the term vocational I do not mean industrial, or trade instruction but the better all round development of the powers of the pupil, active as well as passive, a more complete preparaion for the duties of life. Until recent times such training was given fairlv effectively m the home and in the workshop, but conditions of life are altering, and are making demands these institutions no longer meet. Other means must be or-an ised for the purpose, else the progress of society will be retarded. It would appear that the best agency available is the school, and it must®adapt itself to the task. Dor the sake of social progress and national efficiency there must be all through our school work more of education having a direct bearing upon the activities and purposes of life.

The revision of the primarv school syllabus has at length been completed, and is to come into force at once. The chief changes are in the direction of greater conciseness in the form of the syllabus itself. Much of the optional matter that was such a feature of the previous one is relegated to the end in the form of suggestions. There are some slight alterations in the requirements for the certificate of proficiency, and the grouping of classes is more definitely encouraged than hitherto, there are comparatively few changes in the syllabus itself, the chief alterations being a redistribution of the arithmetic and provision for definite lessons in Course B " geography and in history, in addition to the intelligent use of a reading book that formerly satisfied the requirements in these two subjects.