WRONG BIAS IN EDUCATION

Otago Witness, Issue 3911, 26 February 1929, Page 9

WRONG BIAS IN EDUCATION

DRIFT TO TOWNS ENCOURAGED. WELLINGTON, February 20. The Minister of Education (Mr H. Atmore) called on members of the Wellington Education Board at their meeting today. The chairman (Mr T. Forsyth) mentioned the urgent necessity for additional primary schools throughout the Dominion, and asked if the Minister had any statement to make regarding junior high schools. Mr Atmore said he was not prepared to make any statement for another fortnight at least. It was a big decision to make, and he wished to take time and obtain full information; That was why he was travelling through the Dominion meeting boards, school committees, university councils, etc. He was satisfied that akin to the question of education was that of land settlement. The unemployment existing in New Zealand to-day was very largely due to the fact that we had had an academic bias to our education system. Unemployment was not a visitation of the Almighty; it was plain cause and effect and nothing else. Academic bias had put into the minds of boys and girls the idea tliat they should be clerks and nothing else, and by their drift to the towns we were making the structure top-heavy. Closer land settlement must be brought about, and there was no • possibility of ridding New Zealand of the curse of unemployment until this kernel of the question was faced. The building of roads and such relief measures were mere palliatives; Education must have an agricultural bias. At present we were combing the bright boys out of the country into the towns; but the majority of the people must go on the land if we were to do away with unemployment. The Minister stressed the urgent demand for a larger building vote for schools for the next year or two, and also expressed the opinion that in all questions of policy a decision should be reached by the Minister himself as the representative of the people, and not. by any of the permanent officers. He said this without any reflection whatever on the permanent officers of his department. A Minister was not an expert, arid he should not be. — (“Hear, hear.”) An expert in an executive position was a danger. Experts were paid to advise the representatives of the people. Asked by the chairman for a statemerit regarding-a conference of education boards which had hitherto not been permitted by the department, Mr Atmore .'eplied that he considered it a grave oversight that the boards did not confer. He would see that such a conference was brought abo i.