THE EDUCATION ACT OF 1877.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8180, 23 July 1912, Page 5

THE EDUCATION ACT OF 1877.

(To tho Editor "N.Z. Times.”) Sir, —After thirty-five years of striving to beguile ourselves into the belief tbut New Zealand —no longer a mere geographical expression—had Como to lead creation in matters educational, it is a cruel awakening to find the idol tottering and lit to fall; and though the folly of thus vaunting ourselves has como homo to ns by easy enough gradation, the disillusionment is exceedingly nauseating for all that. We must needs take a fresh grip, that is all, and endeavour to evolve out of the muddle something reasonable, a new edifice on natural and practical lines. The Commission recently set up, if composed of the right men, will of course see to it that the existing scheme bo fully laid bare and carefully probed in every part. Largo creative capacity is not, of course, required by them, but it is highly desirable that as a body they combine some measure of constructive intelligence with honesty sufficient to suppress all bias, and with ability to use wise discrimination in the gathering of evidence the most reliable and the most helpful in solving a most vital and a most difficult question. Hero I would ask of you to be kind enough to allow mo a few suggestions:

(1) Let us follow nature and hasten much more slowly in elementary work at least, eliminating everything in the nature of cramming and guard against the mistake of permitting large school buildings and numerically unwieldy classeii Unfortunately for this plan adequate staffing would at first prove an obstacle. We have not teachers enough, and what wo do have must have time to got out of the old ruts. So far they have not been suffered to

show tho least individuality—a most essential quality. They have occupied the degrading position of carrying out without question the many and ridiculous fads of a diversity of boards and inspectors—have been and are, in fact, mere machines.

(2) The child must not be handicapped as at present, forcing it to expend more than half its time and most of its energy in preparing lor a variety of .spectacular entertainments in order to assist building and maintenance funds for board and committee. Nominally our elementary schools are free; the people aro taxed for that. They are also further taxed that tho child may be reared to stage business, tinder compulsion.

(3) Let us ensure thorough grounding in reading, writing, and arithmetic. In this we fall below the conditions which in tho main obtained prior to 1877. Let us seek primarily to tempt the child with interesting and appropriate reading and recognise that from the total training during childhood there should result- in the child a taste for interesting and improving reading which should direct and inspire its subsequent intellectual life. That schooling which results in this taste for good reading, however unsystematic or eccentric the schooling may have been, has achieved a main end* in elementary education, and that schooling which has not resulted in implanting this permanent taste, lias failed. Guided and animated by this impulse to acquire knowledge and exercise his imagination through reading, the individual will continue to educate himself through life —without that deep-rooted impression he will soon cease to draw on tho accumulated wisdom of tho past and the new resources of the present, and as he grows older ho will live in a mental atmosphere which is always growing emptier and thinner. Do we not all know many people who seem to live in a mental vacuum—to whom, indeed, wo have a difficulty in attributing immortality, because thqy apparently have so little life except that of the body? Fifteen minutes a day of good reading would have given any one of this multitude a really human life. Tho uplifting of the democratic masses depends on this implanting at school of tho taste for good reading. In conclusion, let us lay to heart Plato’s warning to man, "That education is not filling the mind with knowledge, but turning tho eye of the soul towards tho light.”—l am, etc..

H. v. BLAEAMBERG, Palmerston North, July 19lh.