THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1930. SCHOLARS AND SCHOOLS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20480, 4 February 1930, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1930. SCHOLARS AND SCHOOLS.

Year by year, as the State schools reopen after the long vacation ushered in by Christmas, there is experienced in this city and its suburbs a difficulty in accommodating pupils. This fact, impressed again this week, should not be regarded, however, as necessarily justifying an indiscriminate demand for larger schools or more of them. To an extent, it furnishes good ground for urging an increase of accommodation. At the very least, there should be provision sufficient to meet the natural increase of school population ; and in the case of Auckland, with its development still maintained and likely to be, the difficulty presents an argument for additional premises. But the problem is not one for offhand solution by a building programme. Much more is involved than the simple question of making room for all seeking admission in this or that particular school. To treat it as a "merely mathematical relation between bo many pupils seeking accommodation end so much cubic space to be for them is to miss much of importance. That leaves out of account the possibility that the demand may be for a type of education not reasonably desired. To guide the demand is at least as urgent, when a truly national viewpoint is taken, as to find means to meet it. ; This aspect of the question should be faced with special care when postprimary education is considered. To judge by the increase of enrolments this week in the secondary schools, there exists a growing appreciation of post-primary schooling, a growth the more noticeable when regard is paid to the fact that the pupils now enrolling were born in a period when the birth-rate was relatively low on account of the war; but it does not follow that this growing appreciation takes a wise direction.

Broadly viewed, it promises a rising general standard of education; analysed, it may reveal a carelessness about fitting the rising generation for useful as well as enjoyable life, and therefore mean a result less satisfactory than a cursory surrey indicates.

' A reassuring faet is that the enrolments at the grammar schools, although embarrassingly large in some of the schools, ai'e not in the aggregate in excess of what was to be expected, even when there is considered the existing restriction of avenues, of employment for youth and the consequent probability that a number of pupils, who in normal times would have left school to take up remunerative occupations, are returning to lessons. Some of these may find employment before the year is over. In any event, the grammar school accommodation, in the aggregate, is sufficient, whatever the anxiety of the Grammar Schools Board about the future. Side by side .with the reassurance given by the enrolment figures of these schools, there is a welcome increase in the demand made on accommodation in technical schools. This betokens an increasing preference for training for handicrafts. A deduction of this sort has to be discounted a little for the reason that in these schools, like the grammar schools, the roll numbers will be temporarily swollen through the re- | tention of scholars at present unable to find employment. Nevertheless, taking as a criterion the enrolments at the Seddon Memorial Technical College, which the principal describes as "the absolute limit," and the numbers to whom he has had to refuse admission for lack of 1 room, this preference' for a non-1 academic schooling is to be noted, \tfith satisfaction. Of recent years' there has been a tendency to crowd; into the post-primary schools offering mainly an academic training, a' tendency leading to over-supply of the professions. This lowered the prospect of individual happiness and success in life and was prejudicial to the Dominion's outlook. It went dangerously and detrimentally far, and the risk of it has not been wholly averted; but the apparent checking of it holds out hope of, better things. ' j Without a complete analysis of the enrolments it is impossible to speak with full assurance of this apparent increase in the preference for handi- j crafts, and there remains the possibility that commercial courses, j which are included in the curriculum I of the technical schools, have been j chosen in too many cases. Against this, however, can bo set the evidence that the course in agriculture has attracted a marked increase of attention. At the Soddon 1 emorial College, for example, the maximum accommodation in this course has been filled, and some applicants for enrolment in it have 0 bo turned away. From other quarters come similar indications of the rising interest in technical training for farm work. This is all to the good yet there is a moral to bo diawn by the authorities, particularly the supreme authorities who | control the national purse. Ileitis

a tide to be taken at the flood. Expenditure on accommodation and facilities m us t he given that "agricultural bias" about, which so much has been said in high places. It is all very well to issue official brochures on vocational guidance and to set out in them the scope and attractiveness of agricultural pursuits ; but what if those inspired by these counsels find doors closed against their knocking when they offer as pupils in agriculture? The Government has called a halt in expenditure on school buildings,,and the Education Department is rigorously enforcing a policy of undertaking additions to buildings in only the most urgent instances, while the whole question is "in the air" until the Parliamentary Committee reports on its tour of investigation. When that report, now in preparation, is considered by Parliament, there should be taken into account what is indicated by the applications for enrolment at the beginning of this school year. In particular, heed ought to be given to the urgency of adequato accommodation for post-primary pupils in agriculture. It is understood that postprimary education will have special reference, including the future of the junior high schools. In this connection, the need for sufficient and efficient means to give secondary training in agriculture calls for prompt action.