EFFICIENCY IN EDUCATION.

Southland Times, Issue 20633, 3 November 1928, Page 3

EFFICIENCY IN EDUCATION.

To the Editor. Sir, —I thought I had rendered “Old Hand” hors de combat, and I was pointing my arrow at another target, “The Wowser,” but I see in Wednesday’s Times “Old Hand” has another kick at me. He says that he agrees with Mr H. A. Parkinson that there should be more education, but fails to see bow it can be attained without more teachers and greater expense. Evidently to your correspondent more teachers means greater efficiency, but to “Slim Jim” it means exactly the opposite. It puzzles me why “Old Hand” wrote his previous letters if he believes in more teachers and greater expense. He says the subject of discussion is both interesting and important, and hopes it may have abler exponents than he and I. It is quite evident that your correspondent wouldn’t dream of looking for talent in an old Cocky wearing secondhand clothes and cutting his way” through a network of manuka roots in the slush and slurry in the swamps in the backblocks of Southland. Oh no, Sir, he would look for his experts strutting about the streets in Invercargill cultivating a bit of hair under their noses, and wearing spats and side-locks, and copying the efforts of others and dishing it out to the farmers of Southland, telling them what they should do, at a salary of £lOOO a year, but, Mr Editor, let “Old Hand” take them out on hill country and tell them to yoke up a six-horse team and tell them to follow “Casey, the plowman.” Why, Sir, they wouldn’t know where they were, especially if the plow and the six-horse team dropped into an under-runner and they had to dig a hole in the bottom to let them out. —I am, etc., SLIM JIM.