SCHOOL BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT

Southland Times, Issue 23332, 16 October 1937, Page 3

SCHOOL BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT

To The Editor

Sir, —In your issue of October 14 the president of the Southland School Committees’ Association is reported as saying, “Our equipment is modern and up-to-date, and we are certainly ahead of other schools.’’ The president, of course, was speaking of Southland s schools. Now this statement, to my mind, needs considerable qualification. Southland may be on the box seat as regards buildings and equipment, compared with other provinces, but is this a sound basis for gratification on the part of anybody interested in education in Southland? How many draughty, unattractive, cold, 40-to-50-year-old school buildings are there in Southland? The answer would, I maintain, show the president’s statement about modern equipment and buildings to be somewhat inaccurate. However, it is with another side of the question that I am mainly concerned—namely, that when the majority of parents read such statements as Mr Walker’s, there is apt to result a fatal sense of satisfaction with things as they are. It appears to me, too, that it is mainly on. the parent’s viewpoint that progress in education depends. Again I would say that things as they are—buildings and equipment—are, in the main, definitely not satisfactory either in Southland or elswhere in New Zealand primary schools. How often one reads of overseas teachers expressing their dissatisfaction with New Zealand conditions when compared with those in England. Now I trust that the Southland School Committees’ Association will not think that I am not cognizant and appreciative of the splendid efforts it has made and is making on behalf of school children. It is just that I have met with so much apathy towards improving school conditions, and that I fear Mr Walker’s remarks will do nothing to dispel such apathy that I am prompted to write this letter.—Yours, etc., INTERESTED. October 14, 1937.