Educational.

Otago Witness, Issue 1418, 25 January 1879, Page 6

Educational.

« The whole of the Dunedin District Schools were re-oponed on Monday last after the midsummer vacation. The district meeting: of the Primitive Methodists at Wellington, at which 10 clergymen of that denomination and about £00 members of the congregation were present, declared strongly in favour of the existing system of education. The Hon. W. H. Eeynolds and R. Oliver, Esq., M.H.R., have been appointed members of the Otago High Schools Board. The Education Commissioner at Wellington has appointed the following committees .•—University Cornmitfcfe on Secondary Schools, a Committee on Profe-sioual and Technical Schools, and an Endowment and Finance Committee. At a meeting of the Greytown School Committee held on Friday evening,|the 17th, Messrs Green and Eraser were nominated for the vacant seat on the Education Board. The Dunedin School Committee held a special meeting on Saturday morning. Present : Meßsrs Eamsay (chairman), Robin, Macgregor, and Sherwin. A letter was received from the secretary of the Education Board, stating that Miss Nicholls, matron of the South District^ School, was the only eligible applicant for the « position of matron of the Albany street School j t and it was resolved that Miss Nicholls be re- ' commended to the Board for appointment. A Wellington telegram fays .-—The education question ia exciting great interest h<r i. Voluminous correspondence is going on in the papers, and the Chronicle has had several articles supporting the secular system as the only one i o-Bi-ble in this Colony. Speaking of the greivous neglect of attention to common things and common employment as a means of education, the Philadelphia Public Ledger sensibly remarks that " it is in the study of common things, that are so plentiful all around us, but so little understood, that an education may be gained of which at present we have only begun to conceive. Schools are numerous, books are abundant, every child is now made master of the elements of learning, yet there is a lack of practical education ; the effects of the school are apt to fade away on the farm and in the factory, and a separation, if not an antagonism, often takes place between study and daily life. We need a bridge which will carry the scholar with his habits of study and inquiry safely into the life of profitable labour, without obliging him to drop what he has taken sg much pains to- gain. Such a bridge may be found in the study of common things. Ordinary life pursuits furnish abundant material for such study. Every object we see or handle in every-day life has a history well worth perusing, a composition well worth analysing, a future well worth conjecturing. However common it may be, it hau that in it, and about, which will for ever prevent it from being commonplace. Every employment we engage in, however mechanical or insignificant it may seem, will escape from all such odium if it is pursued with an active brain as well as a busy hand— if its resources are examined, its history studied, its methods compared, its best purposes followed. Such education will make labour far more valuable by introducing into it the element of i thought ; it will increase the power of observation, and stimulate the curiosity, which is the germ of all knowledge ; it will invest the world of common things with richer meaning and keener flavour ; and best of all, it will give continual occupation to those higher faculties of man which are apt to rust in the tame routine of every-day life, when not thus lifted out of the region of commonplace."