CORRESPONDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, 7 January 1927, Page 11

CORRESPONDENCE

EDUCATION IN COUNTRY DISTRICTS. Sir, —Another year has come and gone like the centuries before it, and w» now turn hopeful eyes to the New Year. Another school year has also come and gone, and before another one commencea 1 wish to take the Education Board to task for their backward policy of keeping open schools on back roads, where the children could easily be taken out regularly to main schools, where they would have permanent and seasoned teachers to give them a foundation for their future lives. Now the State takes to itself (and rightly so) the right to demand service from all of its citizens from the highest to the low, especially in times of national stress such as war. She even demands that they lay down their lives for their country or suffer bodily injury and sickness. This being the case it necessarily follows that the citizen has a demand on the State to properly equip him for the battle of life. I am not directing my remarks at any individual backblock teacher, but I will say this, that the young girls and young men just out of colleges are not capable or experienced enough to lead ox- drive those manly principles into a boy which are so necessary to him if he is to be of service to his country, or is to stand up to his Gethsemane when it strikes him, as it strikes everyone somehow and some time (Christ himself had to go through it), and not become a burden and a hindrance. Fortunately in Taranaki, at least, we have very few districts wherts every child off the back roads could not be taken to centralised schools by motor cars at a cheaper (although cheapness is a secondary consideration) rate than it costs to run small schools. Up to practically recent times education was not absolutely necessary for the masses, religion more than taking jts place as a character builder, but the State, rightly or wrongly, stepped in and said education was enough as far as it was concerned, and officially it now takes no notice of religion. Fortunately they never went so far as to prohibit religion being taught privately. We have a pitiable example of a no religion no education country to-day in Bolshevik Russia, and there is no doubt that if all the world followed Russia’s example it would only be a short time when Darwin’s theory that man descended from monkeys would have to be reversed to the fact (not theory) that man was mentally, physically and morally descending to the monkey. Therefore the State officially ignoring religious training as one of its laws is bound to give the people a substitute, and education is the only one that comes near the mark, and the back-block child has as much right to be well educated as the city one. Coming back to our local Education Board, I believe they did propose elosing the small schools, but altered their minds when one school committee put forward the argument that it would reduca the value of their land if the small school was closed. If this is so, I am surprised at any education board being taken in by such an argument. Personally, if I were buying a farm on a back road I would be prepared to pay at least £2 an aero more for it if I was sure my children would be taken out to a school with a good master in charge. I am sure that if the board could have looked into the vanity boxes (mostly called their heads) of the people who put up that argument they would have found that their real objection was that they would lose what glamour attaches to being a school committee man, and as it generally takes every man on the road to make up a full committee, of course they were unanimous in their argument.—l am, etc. W. C. HICKEY. Oaonui, .Tan. 1, 1927.