South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1900.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2678, 5 January 1900, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1900.

The Council of the New Zealand Educa tional Institute which has spent three days here in transacting the business of its annual meeting, is areal live body, with which the teachers of the colony may well be proud to be associated. The work of the Council as will be seen from our reports, was in the main of a somewhat selfish character. That is to say it dealt chiefly with the interests of teachers as teachers, though {these indirectly of course must affect the interests of the taught, as the better the position and standing of the teacher, the better the class of men and women that will be attracted to the profession. The personnel of the Council, however, proves that in spite of all existing disadvantages the profession has attracted, or has by other means than its attraction secured, the services of a number of first rate men, men who would have made themselves eminent in any walk of life. But though the impression given by the na ture of the business transacted may be that the teachers’ delegates were met to look after their own interests in the first place, a notable instance of a wider view was -furnished in the President’s address, which dealt with the necessity for the thorough training of-teachers, not for their own sake only, but for the sake of their pupils chiefly. And his remarks upon the desirability of reorganing our overlapping and inconsequent double system of primary and secondary schools were very much to the point. We are very strongly inclined to think that the Teachers’ Institute would be of more benefit to the teachersthemselves, if it showed a more unselfish attention to the ' purpose of the teachers’ existence,as it would then be assured of public sympathy. For our own part we look upon the present condition of the primary schools as little short of disgraceful, from the point of view of the interests of the children, which are also the public interest, and are no less the teachers’ interests. The excessive proportion of “ pupil teachers ’’ employed ; the practice of dismissing apprentices and taking on others, which has no parallel in the colony except we are told, in the dressmaking trade ; the carelessness with which proved unfit persons are given and maintained in appointments on personal grounds; the neglect to make up-to-date provision for the training of teachers, and to provide that the supply of trained teachers shall fit the demand; for these and others reasons our primary school system is by no means a thing to be proud of, and we are pleased to see that the Minister of Education has been courageous enough to play the heretic, and declare—how he ought to have trembled when he did so—that the Education Act had been a fetish. Once declare an idol false, a better one must be sought, and with it a better cult.