SCHOOL COMMITTEE ELECTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19916, 9 April 1928, Page 12

SCHOOL COMMITTEE ELECTIONS.

Sir, —Nominations for these close on Monday, April 23 (generally), and if needs be elections will be" held ou Monday, April 30. To your wide constituency of readers let me appeal for a healthy and intelligent interest in these elections. Too often they are allowed to go by default. /School committees may be said to be the cradle of our education system of government, and "who rocks the cradle rules the world." This conception will not secure the endorsement of the cynic who serves on a school committee with melancholia, believing its duties to be restricted to petty routine. However, a quarter of a century's association with school work has convinced mo that beyond the written constitution of a school committee there, is the broader unwritten constitution. This is flexible, giving men and women of generous parts ample scope for line service to home, school and country. I have so often seen this exemplified. The contrast in the work of various committees is just the difference in personnel. Only the most enlightened and best-equipped citizens should bo elected to our school committees. This is necessary to secure moral support to school children and to teachers, and to develop wisely that closer association of parent, child and teacher to which our education system must move to become more effective. The School committee, too, in the final analysis, is the representative of that vital principle of local government, which is forever opposed to bureaucratic or over-centralised government. All too soon our boys and girls grow up. To day iu our public schools their plastic minds, are being wrought upon, and there is being moulded the capacity, the character and the destiny of our future citizenry. For the love- of our nation's childhood, our heritage and our ideals, I would earnestly appeal to the parents of the Dominion to show their personal and practical interest at the forthcoming election in that really wonderful institution, our public schools. A. J. STA.IX WORTHY. Gillies Avenue, Epsom.