THE GOAL OF EDUCATION

Southland Times, Issue 19518, 18 May 1922, Page 5

THE GOAL OF EDUCATION

ADDRESS BY MR PARR RUSH TO PROFESSIONS DEPRECATED (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, May T». Addiwing the delegates attending th# combined conference of directors, supervisors. and members of Boards of Management of the technical schools of <he Dominion, the Hon. C. J. Parr, speaking on the educational outlook as he saw it, said the most conservative and reactionary of them had to admit to-day that tley had to revise their whole outlook in regard to education and educational systems. He was afraid that the bias of education waa still largely traditional and academic, with the result that in this country as in (jthers the best brains of the young were being directed to professions. That was not sound. He declared emphatically that tho best brains should go to the farms, industries, and business of the country. If thair education system was not giving a bias in this direction then he thought there was something wrong. It was their duty and his, with open and impartial mindn, to investigate their educational shortcomings and provide a sound system of education which would direct the talent of their future citizens into a channel more productive of general good. Because a boy had brains it did not follow, as was generally supposed, that he must go to a profession. The fann and industries required the brains that were now going to the professions. They must get away from the traditions of the past. The old monkish system which they inherited, which trained about 5 per cent, of the community, which gave them education, sometimes not too much at that, and left 95 per cent, of the people practically without education, was of course a thing of the past, but stall to some extent the system remained. It was hard to shake it off. They now lived in a new' world, when the whole hundred per cent, of the population required to be educated and prepared for life. He wae glad the conference had devoted considerable time to the new idea of junior high schools. The jiew proposals broke away from the old idea of education. *lhe junior high schools would take the children at twelve yearn and enable the so-called stupid scholars to develop . their faculties so that they might in after life place themselves far ahead of brilliant children who had outrun them in the primary schools. The junior high schools would afford a testing house for the socalled failures of the primary schools. Id would try them out-. The junior high schools would save a considerable amount of wastage of good material which at present went on, and make brighter and finer citizens of many of tho so-called dull and backward children. Some thought it better for the junior high schools to be a separate unit instead of being linked up with technical schools and senior high schools. They should not, risk their becoming merely preparatory schools for technical or other schools. The Department would try the junior high school as a separate unit.