EDUCATION MOVEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16996, 1 November 1918, Page 4

EDUCATION MOVEMENT.

SCHOOL AND HOME INFLUENCES.

An address on the co-ordination of school and home influences was delivered by Mr. R. Harrison, headmaster of the Belmont school, in the Belmont Hall last evening. The speaker said that a complex civilisation made too great demands on the time of 'parents to allow them to instruct their children. Speaking through the State the parent expected the teacher to make his children good citizens and efficient producers. Individually, the parent wished for his child a wholesome mind, an upright character, a healthy body, and a trained intelligence. All these the conscientious teacher strove to achieve. Modern education trended more towards the greater training of the faculties and less towifdn the mere imparting of information. Mr. Harrison emphasised the necessity for greater playing areas for schools, and of properly organised games for training in manly qualities and for developing the body. He appealed to parents for support in any movement having for its object the interesting of children in activities where they are acquiring health and the beginnings of civic interest. The ideal they were striving for wa« to provide as happy and healthy a school life as could be obtained, so that the children should grow up happy, healthy, useful, and honourable men and women. The speaker concluded by expressing regret that attempts were being made to revive denominational schools, and said he hoped the public would not be influenced by clumsy attempts to discredit the State school system. The meeting adopted a resolution viewing with distrust the movement on the part of certain religious bodies to rre-te a sentiment favouring sectarian schools, and expressing its determination to oppose any attempt to alter the present free, secular, and compulsory system of national education, and impressing upon Parliament the necessity for increased grants for educational purposes to overcome existing disabilities and to ensure greater efficiency in the working of the primary schools.