THE SCHOOL AGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22269, 23 May 1934, Page 11

THE SCHOOL AGE

10 THE EDITOR. (sir,— -Did 1, or did I not, see last week that £6OOO had been voted for expenditure by the New Zealand Educational Institute in an effort to reduce the school age, and incidentally to add a huge sum to the amount to be provided by the heavily taxed people of this country, to increase the salaries of a notoriously favoured profession? Would that the toilers of New Zealand who are living on the border line would note and inwardly digest what Mr G. R. Ashbridge is - really after, and rise up and give him his answer. Mr Ashbridge says in his reply to the Minister of Education that “ It is extremely crude to attempt to discredit the case for the readmission of the five-year-olds by saying the teachers are concerned with the question of their salaries and status.” He is welcome to his opinion. I beg seriously to differ, and definitely declare that the Minister is correct. Naturally, Mr Ashbridge would have a following of some parents in seeking a reduction. Some parents would push their children out at four years of age; but I am certain that the great majority who love their children think the age of six quite early enough to send them to school. And I always notice when any faction has a weak case it is proved doubly so when it quotes the educational systems of other countries. I note with appreciation what the secretary of the Teachers’ Institute says: “The Minister is alone in the British Empire in economising in education by raising the school entrance age ” —aye, appreciation of a Minister who will not be hood-winked by a faction which definitely seeks the reduction of the school age of admission, not for the children’s sake, but to the extreme detriment of the welfare of all the people of this Dominion. —I am, etc., R. S.